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The Science of Can and Can't: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals
A luminous guide to how the radical new science of counterfactuals can reveal the full scope of our universe. There is a vast class of properties, which science has so far neglected, that relate not only to what is true the actual but to what could be true: the counterfactual. This is the science of can and can't.
A pioneer in the field, Chiara Marletto explores the extraordinary promise that this revolutionary approach holds for confronting existing technological challenges, from delivering next-generation processors to designing AI. But by contemplating the possible as well as the actual, Marletto goes deeper still, showing how counterfactuals can break down barriers to knowledge and form a more complete, abundant and rewarding picture of the universe itself.
A pioneer in the field, Chiara Marletto explores the extraordinary promise that this revolutionary approach holds for confronting existing technological challenges, from delivering next-generation processors to designing AI. But by contemplating the possible as well as the actual, Marletto goes deeper still, showing how counterfactuals can break down barriers to knowledge and form a more complete, abundant and rewarding picture of the universe itself.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2021
About the author
Chiara Marletto
2 books63 followersChiara Marletto is a Research Fellow working at the Physics Department, University of Oxford. Within Wolfson, she is an active member of the Quantum Cluster and of the New Frontiers Quantum Hub.
Her research is in theoretical physics, with special emphasis on Quantum Theory of Computation, Information Theory, Thermodynamics, Condensed-Matter Physics and Quantum Biology. Some of her recent research has harnessed a recently proposed generalisation of the quantum theory of information - Constructor Theory — to address issues at the foundations of the theory of control and causation in physics. These include applications to defining general principles encompassing classical, quantum and post-quantum theories of information; and to assessing the compatibility of essential features of living systems, such as the ability to self-reproduce and evolve, with fundamental laws of Physics, in particular with Quantum Physics. They also include the definition of a new class of witnesses of non-classicality in systems that need not obey quantum theory, such as gravity; and a scale-independent definition of irreversibility, work and heat, based on constructor-theoretic ideas.
Her research is in theoretical physics, with special emphasis on Quantum Theory of Computation, Information Theory, Thermodynamics, Condensed-Matter Physics and Quantum Biology. Some of her recent research has harnessed a recently proposed generalisation of the quantum theory of information - Constructor Theory — to address issues at the foundations of the theory of control and causation in physics. These include applications to defining general principles encompassing classical, quantum and post-quantum theories of information; and to assessing the compatibility of essential features of living systems, such as the ability to self-reproduce and evolve, with fundamental laws of Physics, in particular with Quantum Physics. They also include the definition of a new class of witnesses of non-classicality in systems that need not obey quantum theory, such as gravity; and a scale-independent definition of irreversibility, work and heat, based on constructor-theoretic ideas.
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April 5, 2021
Chiara Marletto is a delight. A theoretical physicist, she has written a book that makes it stimulating, varied, exciting and real. Plus, it is a genuine, innovative gamechanger. Plus, every chapter begins with a story she has made up, because her father was a fascinating storyteller. On their daily walks, he would make up stories about anything and everything they saw along the way. And passed this talent and tradition on. And one more thing. Marletto is Italian. English is not her first language. All these things combine to make The Science of Can and Can’t an unexpected treasure.
The issue she tackles is that physics has prescribed itself into a dead end. Not for the first time, Man thinks he has discovered everything that is discoverable. At the end of the 19th century, it was recommended that the patent office be shut down, as everything that could possibly be invented had already been. Marletto faces a similar attitude in her field. The book is her refutation of that stance, but it is not a negative one. Instead, she has the answer. She wants to expand the scope of physics laws and principles, by allowing the consideration of the kinds of things that could possibly be as well those that could not possibly be. She calls them counterfactuals, and there is simply no room in dynamical laws of physics for them. Today. Hers is a mind-expanding exercise of great importance. Great premise and great promise, that she pulls off beautifully.
These counterfactuals are given life in every chapter, from quantum theory to quantum computers, to information and knowledge, to work and heat, and all the major laws that apply to them. It can be a challenge to follow, so there is always a diverting short story between the chapters, a kind of amuse-bouche, or in this case, and amuse-cerveau to reset and reboot before the next intellectual leap of faith.
I think I can explain her frustration this way: The universe is a big, messy thing, but physics is all about elegant, compact and streamlined, universal laws. These contradictions and constraints can be lessened if physics were to admit counterfactual principles to the mix. It could lead to a far better understanding of the whole universe.
She explains that like everything else, physics is constantly changing, or should be. The iron-clad laws of the 1700s, like gravity, have proven to be incorrect or at very least insufficient, and new laws have replaced them. That the Earth was flat and the center of the universe was settled science for centuries, until those laws were replaced. The current state of the art, quantum theory and relativity, are incompatible, and one or both of them have to go. Soon, she hopes. But the next level will require far more flexible thinking, and that’s where counterfactuals come in. They expand the possibilities by reframing things in terms of what is possible, not just what can be measured. Or that are impossible, measured or not.
Marletto has set herself a monumental task, one she has been working out with David Deutsch, who it came from. She has to explain everything from basic points, something which I suspect helped them in understanding what they were undertaking. The result is she must explain things like information and knowledge in terms of how they work in physics. It is not always easy, and certainly far from intuitive, but she actually makes it entertaining:
“Something can hold information only if its state could have been otherwise. A computer memory is useless if all the changes in its contents are predetermined in the factory. The user could store nothing in it. And the same holds if you replace ‘factory’ with the Big Bang.” For example.
Knowledge, she says, is resilient information. It is transferable, copiable, and flippable. For her, knowledge is the most resilient stuff that can exist in our universe. The two known processes of creating knowledge are by conjecture and criticism in the mind, and by variation and natural selection in the wild.
For Marletto, physics laws are no-design laws. The randomness of evolution and natural selection rule the universe, and there is no overall scheme behind them. They do not revert to the mean so much as keep changing. Only elementary particles are unchanging. So physicists focus on them, the building blocks of everything else. But the deeper physics looks at them, the more it appears inadequate to describe and compartmentalize them. Reductionism is a curse in physics as much as it is (probably better known) in medicine.
But because of scientists’ insistence on measuring everything and putting it away forever, they have instead discovered that some elemental particles don’t want to be measured, or refuse to be measured, or can’t be measured if their location is known. Physics is waking up to the fact that sleek universal laws are neither. And it seems to be stuck there, awaiting release.
Readers will have to cut her some slack, too. Her examples can stretch credulity. In her discussion of knowledge, she conjures the existence of a hard drive that is full and that cannot be erased (we used to call these ROMs, read-only memory chips, and we used to joke about WOMs, write-only chips that could accept changes but could never be read. Government systems seemed to run on these. But I digress.) These vehicles cannot be carriers of information, because they cannot be copied or flipped, she says. But in practically the next breath, she cites vinyl discs (LPs) as sources of information. Spot the difference? Neither could I. But if you want to understand information and knowledge as they factor in theoretical physics, you have to go along.
The book is as wide-ranging as any good philosophy text. It touches on free will vs. determinism, ancient Greek myths, Aristotle teaching Alexander, and a grumpy old Italian woman fixing a game so Marletto would have to help on the farm. This is not the daily-bread physics 101 text that made you hate physics. And she has a story about that, too.
Marletto saves the big guns for the end, where she reframes the second law of thermodynamics in terms of counterfactuals. She takes 30 pages to do it, bashing it from every conceivable angle so that counterfactuals become the obvious saviors to a system crippled by its self-regulation and restrictions, patching over inconsistencies and the inexplicables. She says counterfactuals do a far better job describing it and making it work. I leave it to theoretical physicists to agree or disagree. But she makes the sale for me. Marletto is a great new voice
David Wineberg
The issue she tackles is that physics has prescribed itself into a dead end. Not for the first time, Man thinks he has discovered everything that is discoverable. At the end of the 19th century, it was recommended that the patent office be shut down, as everything that could possibly be invented had already been. Marletto faces a similar attitude in her field. The book is her refutation of that stance, but it is not a negative one. Instead, she has the answer. She wants to expand the scope of physics laws and principles, by allowing the consideration of the kinds of things that could possibly be as well those that could not possibly be. She calls them counterfactuals, and there is simply no room in dynamical laws of physics for them. Today. Hers is a mind-expanding exercise of great importance. Great premise and great promise, that she pulls off beautifully.
These counterfactuals are given life in every chapter, from quantum theory to quantum computers, to information and knowledge, to work and heat, and all the major laws that apply to them. It can be a challenge to follow, so there is always a diverting short story between the chapters, a kind of amuse-bouche, or in this case, and amuse-cerveau to reset and reboot before the next intellectual leap of faith.
I think I can explain her frustration this way: The universe is a big, messy thing, but physics is all about elegant, compact and streamlined, universal laws. These contradictions and constraints can be lessened if physics were to admit counterfactual principles to the mix. It could lead to a far better understanding of the whole universe.
She explains that like everything else, physics is constantly changing, or should be. The iron-clad laws of the 1700s, like gravity, have proven to be incorrect or at very least insufficient, and new laws have replaced them. That the Earth was flat and the center of the universe was settled science for centuries, until those laws were replaced. The current state of the art, quantum theory and relativity, are incompatible, and one or both of them have to go. Soon, she hopes. But the next level will require far more flexible thinking, and that’s where counterfactuals come in. They expand the possibilities by reframing things in terms of what is possible, not just what can be measured. Or that are impossible, measured or not.
Marletto has set herself a monumental task, one she has been working out with David Deutsch, who it came from. She has to explain everything from basic points, something which I suspect helped them in understanding what they were undertaking. The result is she must explain things like information and knowledge in terms of how they work in physics. It is not always easy, and certainly far from intuitive, but she actually makes it entertaining:
“Something can hold information only if its state could have been otherwise. A computer memory is useless if all the changes in its contents are predetermined in the factory. The user could store nothing in it. And the same holds if you replace ‘factory’ with the Big Bang.” For example.
Knowledge, she says, is resilient information. It is transferable, copiable, and flippable. For her, knowledge is the most resilient stuff that can exist in our universe. The two known processes of creating knowledge are by conjecture and criticism in the mind, and by variation and natural selection in the wild.
For Marletto, physics laws are no-design laws. The randomness of evolution and natural selection rule the universe, and there is no overall scheme behind them. They do not revert to the mean so much as keep changing. Only elementary particles are unchanging. So physicists focus on them, the building blocks of everything else. But the deeper physics looks at them, the more it appears inadequate to describe and compartmentalize them. Reductionism is a curse in physics as much as it is (probably better known) in medicine.
But because of scientists’ insistence on measuring everything and putting it away forever, they have instead discovered that some elemental particles don’t want to be measured, or refuse to be measured, or can’t be measured if their location is known. Physics is waking up to the fact that sleek universal laws are neither. And it seems to be stuck there, awaiting release.
Readers will have to cut her some slack, too. Her examples can stretch credulity. In her discussion of knowledge, she conjures the existence of a hard drive that is full and that cannot be erased (we used to call these ROMs, read-only memory chips, and we used to joke about WOMs, write-only chips that could accept changes but could never be read. Government systems seemed to run on these. But I digress.) These vehicles cannot be carriers of information, because they cannot be copied or flipped, she says. But in practically the next breath, she cites vinyl discs (LPs) as sources of information. Spot the difference? Neither could I. But if you want to understand information and knowledge as they factor in theoretical physics, you have to go along.
The book is as wide-ranging as any good philosophy text. It touches on free will vs. determinism, ancient Greek myths, Aristotle teaching Alexander, and a grumpy old Italian woman fixing a game so Marletto would have to help on the farm. This is not the daily-bread physics 101 text that made you hate physics. And she has a story about that, too.
Marletto saves the big guns for the end, where she reframes the second law of thermodynamics in terms of counterfactuals. She takes 30 pages to do it, bashing it from every conceivable angle so that counterfactuals become the obvious saviors to a system crippled by its self-regulation and restrictions, patching over inconsistencies and the inexplicables. She says counterfactuals do a far better job describing it and making it work. I leave it to theoretical physicists to agree or disagree. But she makes the sale for me. Marletto is a great new voice
David Wineberg
May 4, 2021
Without doubt, Chiara Marletto has achieved something remarkable here, though the nature of the topic does not make for an easy read. The book is an attempt to popularise constructor theory - a very different approach to physics, which Oxford quantum physicist David Deutsch has developed with Marletto. Somewhat oddly, the book doesn't use the term constructor theory, but rather the distinctly clumsier 'science of can and can't'.
The idea is that physics is formulated in a way that is inherently limited because it depends on using mechanisms that follows the progress of dynamic systems using the laws of physics. This method isn't applicable in circumstances where either something may happen, but won't necessarily, nor where something isn't allowed to happen (hence the science of can and can't, which probably should be the science of could and can't if we are going to be picky).
Deutsch and Marletto have proposed a way of using 'counterfactuals' - describing systems where such limitations apply and getting to understand their characteristics in a way that makes it possible to at least consider formulating physics anew, overcoming these limitations and, they hope, even making it possible to consider overcoming the divide between quantum physics and general relativity.
The only way really to get your head around counterfactuals is through examples - for example, Marletto considers a book. We can't use conventional physics to project its future influence on the world around it because it's a case that it could be read and that could change someone's behaviour. One of the significant changes that the counterfactual view delivers is to bring information to the heart of the description of physical processes.
All this is genuinely fascinating - it really isn't at all clear if it will ever deliver anything useful, but it is a totally different way of looking at physical systems and makes a kind of mind-boggling sideways sense. Marletto's writing is approachable and, though I initially suspected her idea of ending each chapter with a short story would prove rather irritating - fiction with a message rarely work well - most of the stories work well. I wish the book got going sooner - Marletto spends an inordinate time skirting around defining what counterfactuals are, and the book doesn't really get beyond the groundwork until about 50 pages in. Oh, and it appears the proofreaders at Allen Lane don't know what the plural of 'aircraft' is.
Probably because the book is an attempt to present in a hand-waving fashion what is no doubt a mathematical concept, it does seem sometimes as if the description of what's happening could be tightened up, as it can veer from the ambiguous to the downright confusing. So, for example, in developing one of the required elements of this theory, we are given the example of an aircraft factory, where we are asked to identify the one thing that will stop the factory working properly if it is eliminated. This, we are supposed to deduce, is the sequence of instructions for constructing the plane. But it would seem equally possible to stop it working by preventing raw materials arriving or removing all the machinery or the workers.
Elsewhere, Marletto uses common terms in ways that don't really match the way they are normally used. Both knowledge and information medium, for example, are given new definitions. Here, for example, a book would not be an information medium, because in the definition used you can't have a read-only information medium. A couple of times in the book, Marletto gives a rather fan-like mention of Philip Pullman's fantasy concept of 'dust' (using it as a parallel for dark matter) - but the real fictional parallel for the whole thing is with the work of another Oxford author, Lewis Carroll.
It was Carroll who had Humpty Dumpty using words to mean what Humpty wanted them to mean - and there's a distinct sense of that going on here. In fact, because counterfactuals feel strange and intangible as a concept, I was constantly reminded of Carroll's poem, The Hunting of the Snark. In the poem the characters are in pursuit of something really important - requiring huge effort - yet they don't really know what it is, until we get to the dark final lines: 'In the midst of a word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away - For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.'
I very much hope that counterfactuals are not a Boojum. We don't know yet - but there is no doubt that the hunt is a fascinating one, just as was that for the Snark - and despite the difficulties of getting constructor theory clear in the reader's head, this book is a remarkable attempt to bring this particular Snark to life.
The idea is that physics is formulated in a way that is inherently limited because it depends on using mechanisms that follows the progress of dynamic systems using the laws of physics. This method isn't applicable in circumstances where either something may happen, but won't necessarily, nor where something isn't allowed to happen (hence the science of can and can't, which probably should be the science of could and can't if we are going to be picky).
Deutsch and Marletto have proposed a way of using 'counterfactuals' - describing systems where such limitations apply and getting to understand their characteristics in a way that makes it possible to at least consider formulating physics anew, overcoming these limitations and, they hope, even making it possible to consider overcoming the divide between quantum physics and general relativity.
The only way really to get your head around counterfactuals is through examples - for example, Marletto considers a book. We can't use conventional physics to project its future influence on the world around it because it's a case that it could be read and that could change someone's behaviour. One of the significant changes that the counterfactual view delivers is to bring information to the heart of the description of physical processes.
All this is genuinely fascinating - it really isn't at all clear if it will ever deliver anything useful, but it is a totally different way of looking at physical systems and makes a kind of mind-boggling sideways sense. Marletto's writing is approachable and, though I initially suspected her idea of ending each chapter with a short story would prove rather irritating - fiction with a message rarely work well - most of the stories work well. I wish the book got going sooner - Marletto spends an inordinate time skirting around defining what counterfactuals are, and the book doesn't really get beyond the groundwork until about 50 pages in. Oh, and it appears the proofreaders at Allen Lane don't know what the plural of 'aircraft' is.
Probably because the book is an attempt to present in a hand-waving fashion what is no doubt a mathematical concept, it does seem sometimes as if the description of what's happening could be tightened up, as it can veer from the ambiguous to the downright confusing. So, for example, in developing one of the required elements of this theory, we are given the example of an aircraft factory, where we are asked to identify the one thing that will stop the factory working properly if it is eliminated. This, we are supposed to deduce, is the sequence of instructions for constructing the plane. But it would seem equally possible to stop it working by preventing raw materials arriving or removing all the machinery or the workers.
Elsewhere, Marletto uses common terms in ways that don't really match the way they are normally used. Both knowledge and information medium, for example, are given new definitions. Here, for example, a book would not be an information medium, because in the definition used you can't have a read-only information medium. A couple of times in the book, Marletto gives a rather fan-like mention of Philip Pullman's fantasy concept of 'dust' (using it as a parallel for dark matter) - but the real fictional parallel for the whole thing is with the work of another Oxford author, Lewis Carroll.
It was Carroll who had Humpty Dumpty using words to mean what Humpty wanted them to mean - and there's a distinct sense of that going on here. In fact, because counterfactuals feel strange and intangible as a concept, I was constantly reminded of Carroll's poem, The Hunting of the Snark. In the poem the characters are in pursuit of something really important - requiring huge effort - yet they don't really know what it is, until we get to the dark final lines: 'In the midst of a word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away - For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.'
I very much hope that counterfactuals are not a Boojum. We don't know yet - but there is no doubt that the hunt is a fascinating one, just as was that for the Snark - and despite the difficulties of getting constructor theory clear in the reader's head, this book is a remarkable attempt to bring this particular Snark to life.
December 28, 2023
ปีที่แล้ว (2022) ตื่นเต้นกับ The Existential Physics โดยอาจารย์ Sabine Hossenfelder ปีนี้ (2023) ตื่นเต้นและอิ่มใจกับ The Science of Can and Can’t โดยนักฟิสิกส์หญิงอีกคน ชื่ออาจารย์ Chiara Marletto นักฟิสิกส์เชิงทฤษฎีจากมหาวิทยาลัยอ็อกซ์ฟอร์ด
The Science of Can and Can’t มีเป้าหมายที่ทะเยอทะยานอย่างยิ่ง ผู้เขียนนำเสนอว่า ฟิสิกส์ทุกวันนี้มาถึงจุดอับแล้วในแง่ที่หลายคนรู้มองว่า มนุษย์ได้ค้นพบทุกสิ่งเท่าที่ค้นพบได้ (discoverable) แล้ว ความลับของเอกภพอื่นใดนอกเหนือจากที่เรารู้คือสิ่งที่ไม่มีทางค้นพบหรือพิสูจน์ได้จริง แต่อาจารย์ Chiara ไม่เห็นด้วยกับจุดยืนนี้ ในหนังสือเล่มนี้เธอเสนอว่าเราต้องขยายขอบเขตของกฎและหลักการทางฟิสิกส์ ด้วยการสำรวจทั้ง “สิ่งที่อาจเป็นไปได้” และ “สิ่งที่อาจเป็นไปไม่ได้” อันเป็นที่มาของชื่อหนังสือ อาจารย์ Chiara เรียกการสำรวจทั้งสองขั้วนี้ว่า counterfactuals ซึ่งถ้าจะให้สรุปสั้นกว่านั้นอีกก็คือ อาจารย์เสนอว่าเอกภพนั้นซับซ้อนวุ่นวายเกินกว่าที่กฎฟิสิกส์อันเรียบง่ายจะอธิบายได้หมด ดังนั้นเราต้องขยายขอบเขตของฟิสิกส์ให้ยืดหยุ่นมากขึ้น ออกสำรวจสิ่งที่ “เป็นไปได้” และ “เป็นไปไม่ได้” ไม่ใช่แค่ศึกษาแต่สิ่งที่ “วัดได้” (measurable)
ตลอดทั้งเล่มผู้เขียนพยายามหว่านล้อมว่า การศึกษา counterfactuals ไม่ใช่สิ่งที่เราทำไม่ได้ เพราะในความเป็นจริงการค้นพบทางฟิสิกส์หลายครั้งในประวัติศาสตร์ที่ผ่านมาก็ตั้งอยู่บนฐานคิดแบบ counterfactuals ยกตัวอย่างเช่น อัลเบิร์ต ไอน์สไตน์ ก็เริ่มต้นจากหลักการแบบ counterfactuals สองข้อ ก่อนจะค้นพบทฤษฎีสัมพัทธภาพ นั่นคือ 1) เป็นไปไม่ได้ที่จะเดินทางเร็วกว่าแสง และ 2) เ���็นไปไม่ได้ที่จะแยกแยะความแตกต่างระหว่างแรงโน้มถ่วงและความเร่ง แต่ละบทในเล่มยกตัวอย่างต่าง ๆ ของ counterfactuals ตั้งแต่ทฤษ��ีควอนตัม ข้อมูล ความรู้ งาน ความร้อน และกฎหลัก ๆ ที่เกี่ยวข้อง ซึ่งเนื้อหาบางช่วงก็อ่านยากและต้องพยายามทำความเข้าใจพอสมควร (เพราะผู้เขียนนำเสนอไอเดียใหม่แบบพลิกโลก) ซึ่งผู้เขียนก็พยายามช่วยเราผ่านอุปมาอุปไมย และเรื่องสั้นที่คั่นระหว่างบท ให้เราได้พักสมองและเตรียมตัวก่อนกระโจนเข้าสู่การกระโดดทางความคิดในบทต่อไป 55
สนุก เปิดโลก และอ่านจบก็รู้สึกว่าได้รู้อะไรใหม่ ๆ มากมายแม้ระหว่างทางจะเผาเซลล์สมองไปมากกว่าปกติ :D เชื่อว่าเนื้อหาในเล่มจะจุดประกายการโต้เถียงและแรงกระเพื่อมในวงการวิทยาศาสตร์ไปอีกนาน
The Science of Can and Can’t มีเป้าหมายที่ทะเยอทะยานอย่างยิ่ง ผู้เขียนนำเสนอว่า ฟิสิกส์ทุกวันนี้มาถึงจุดอับแล้วในแง่ที่หลายคนรู้มองว่า มนุษย์ได้ค้นพบทุกสิ่งเท่าที่ค้นพบได้ (discoverable) แล้ว ความลับของเอกภพอื่นใดนอกเหนือจากที่เรารู้คือสิ่งที่ไม่มีทางค้นพบหรือพิสูจน์ได้จริง แต่อาจารย์ Chiara ไม่เห็นด้วยกับจุดยืนนี้ ในหนังสือเล่มนี้เธอเสนอว่าเราต้องขยายขอบเขตของกฎและหลักการทางฟิสิกส์ ด้วยการสำรวจทั้ง “สิ่งที่อาจเป็นไปได้” และ “สิ่งที่อาจเป็นไปไม่ได้” อันเป็นที่มาของชื่อหนังสือ อาจารย์ Chiara เรียกการสำรวจทั้งสองขั้วนี้ว่า counterfactuals ซึ่งถ้าจะให้สรุปสั้นกว่านั้นอีกก็คือ อาจารย์เสนอว่าเอกภพนั้นซับซ้อนวุ่นวายเกินกว่าที่กฎฟิสิกส์อันเรียบง่ายจะอธิบายได้หมด ดังนั้นเราต้องขยายขอบเขตของฟิสิกส์ให้ยืดหยุ่นมากขึ้น ออกสำรวจสิ่งที่ “เป็นไปได้” และ “เป็นไปไม่ได้” ไม่ใช่แค่ศึกษาแต่สิ่งที่ “วัดได้” (measurable)
ตลอดทั้งเล่มผู้เขียนพยายามหว่านล้อมว่า การศึกษา counterfactuals ไม่ใช่สิ่งที่เราทำไม่ได้ เพราะในความเป็นจริงการค้นพบทางฟิสิกส์หลายครั้งในประวัติศาสตร์ที่ผ่านมาก็ตั้งอยู่บนฐานคิดแบบ counterfactuals ยกตัวอย่างเช่น อัลเบิร์ต ไอน์สไตน์ ก็เริ่มต้นจากหลักการแบบ counterfactuals สองข้อ ก่อนจะค้นพบทฤษฎีสัมพัทธภาพ นั่นคือ 1) เป็นไปไม่ได้ที่จะเดินทางเร็วกว่าแสง และ 2) เ���็นไปไม่ได้ที่จะแยกแยะความแตกต่างระหว่างแรงโน้มถ่วงและความเร่ง แต่ละบทในเล่มยกตัวอย่างต่าง ๆ ของ counterfactuals ตั้งแต่ทฤษ��ีควอนตัม ข้อมูล ความรู้ งาน ความร้อน และกฎหลัก ๆ ที่เกี่ยวข้อง ซึ่งเนื้อหาบางช่วงก็อ่านยากและต้องพยายามทำความเข้าใจพอสมควร (เพราะผู้เขียนนำเสนอไอเดียใหม่แบบพลิกโลก) ซึ่งผู้เขียนก็พยายามช่วยเราผ่านอุปมาอุปไมย และเรื่องสั้นที่คั่นระหว่างบท ให้เราได้พักสมองและเตรียมตัวก่อนกระโจนเข้าสู่การกระโดดทางความคิดในบทต่อไป 55
สนุก เปิดโลก และอ่านจบก็รู้สึกว่าได้รู้อะไรใหม่ ๆ มากมายแม้ระหว่างทางจะเผาเซลล์สมองไปมากกว่าปกติ :D เชื่อว่าเนื้อหาในเล่มจะจุดประกายการโต้เถียงและแรงกระเพื่อมในวงการวิทยาศาสตร์ไปอีกนาน
June 6, 2021
Very poetic, but I don’t actually understand what the framework offers concretely. I don’t know if there is something deep here, or if it is just weaving words. Perhaps reading some of the actual papers will shed more light.
That said: strong claims require strong evidence, and I did not find that in this book.
That said: strong claims require strong evidence, and I did not find that in this book.
March 21, 2022
This approach may lead to some useful discoveries someday. But I sincerely doubt it.
October 4, 2021
This book is about the general limits of the universe.
Or what can or can't be done within the universe.
AKA counterfactuals.
Traditionally, when trying to explain something using physics,
you need to start with initial conditions and the laws of motion.
This is a satisfactory method when it comes to explaining where a ball
will land, but what is the initial condition of the initial condition of the universe?
What is the initial condition of knowledge?
The author believes that the laws of motion may be derivative
of something more fundamental: counterfactuals.
To explain something using counterfactuals, you don't need
initial conditions and the laws of motion.
Counterfactuals allow you to make specific laws about traditionally
approximate entities such as energy, heat, and work.
They also allow you to bring abstract-ish concepts like
knowledge and information into the sphere of physics.
Pretty cool stuff.
If for nothing else, read this book to find out the interesting connection between
work* and information.
*work-like energy transfer
Or what can or can't be done within the universe.
AKA counterfactuals.
Traditionally, when trying to explain something using physics,
you need to start with initial conditions and the laws of motion.
This is a satisfactory method when it comes to explaining where a ball
will land, but what is the initial condition of the initial condition of the universe?
What is the initial condition of knowledge?
The author believes that the laws of motion may be derivative
of something more fundamental: counterfactuals.
To explain something using counterfactuals, you don't need
initial conditions and the laws of motion.
Counterfactuals allow you to make specific laws about traditionally
approximate entities such as energy, heat, and work.
They also allow you to bring abstract-ish concepts like
knowledge and information into the sphere of physics.
Pretty cool stuff.
If for nothing else, read this book to find out the interesting connection between
work* and information.
*work-like energy transfer
January 22, 2023
Intriguing. It contains some elegant definitions for "information", "knowledge" and "work", and genuinely insightful ideas. Some parts remain, however, frustratingly vague. The casual tone is at times charming, at other times rather annoying. This book is not quite yet the new "Gödel, Esher, Bach".
Marletto's central thesis is that one should think about (physical) systems not in terms of their states and dynamics (or rules if it is a game, for instance) but in terms of counterfactuals: what can and cannot be done in the system. For example, a universe in which one can build a computer (a universal device to process information), but we can build a perpetual motion machine. Marletto clearly builds upon David Deutch's earlier thesis that "it is either possible, or forbidden by the laws of physics".
Marletto's central thesis is that one should think about (physical) systems not in terms of their states and dynamics (or rules if it is a game, for instance) but in terms of counterfactuals: what can and cannot be done in the system. For example, a universe in which one can build a computer (a universal device to process information), but we can build a perpetual motion machine. Marletto clearly builds upon David Deutch's earlier thesis that "it is either possible, or forbidden by the laws of physics".
Read
March 15, 2022DNF at about a third of the way in, after slogging through it for more than a month. There may be something in constructor theory itself as a mathematical tool, but this kind of handwavy too-popular non-explanation is giving me serious doubts, especially when the author sees it as a panacea that will solve all the ills of kinematics-oriented modern science (?) with the aid of its magic wan-, err, I mean, quantum computers. Not to even mention the pretentious yawn-inducing writing itself.
June 20, 2021
Awful. I'm 2/3 of the way through (and I will finish it) but the book basically overpromises. To paraphrase Einstein, you don't really understand something if you cannot explain it to your grandmother. Little side stories are ridiculous. I get the feeling the positive reviews are from people who have not read the book or are friends of the author.
May 29, 2021
Fine but overly self important
The ideas are interesting. The delivery is a tad awkward. The tone is going for something that doesn’t work for me. Flip through it, but don’t read word for word.
The ideas are interesting. The delivery is a tad awkward. The tone is going for something that doesn’t work for me. Flip through it, but don’t read word for word.
May 18, 2021
I liked this remarkable book a lot. Marletto has more than succeeded in writing a clear explanation of her ideas that is entertaining, readily accessible, informative, optimistic, exciting and fertile.
I would like to have seen a bit more context normally provided by notes, references and bibliography, particularly on the relationship to systems theory. For example, she shows how to categorize phenomena by the capabilities of the phenomena of their conditions. Flippable, copyable phenomena can make up information media. Interoperable information media can make up a computer. Systems analysts have long been familiar with such techniques when specifying an 'architecture' of layered abstract requirements for the physical design of 'applications' and other technology (- we sometimes jokingly call what Marletto calls 'counterfactuals', '-ilities', - the set of requirements like usability, reliability and recoverability, and they are an important part of the on-line, automated world we experience every day). As such, the book feels like it floats in a vacuum, set apart from other lines of current thinking, but that is wrong, it doesn't.
Marletto conjectures that this generalised systematic counterfactual analysis can provide a more productive foundation for science, fixing the well-known issues with its laws, particularly where classical and quantum physics collide, and expanding its scope to conceptual phenomena like information and knowledge. She proposes that her generalised method will allow us to use counterfactuals associated with information and knowledge to create new physical laws relevant to information systems and knowledge management (or, as I say, explain why established practice, discovered by other methods including the study of systems theory, already works). She shows that if this way of thinking is incorporated into the scientific method, these disciplines, that we have traditionally thought of as outside physics, can be studied and exploited alongside other physical systems, opening up a new realm of opportunities and possibilities.
I would like to have seen a bit more context normally provided by notes, references and bibliography, particularly on the relationship to systems theory. For example, she shows how to categorize phenomena by the capabilities of the phenomena of their conditions. Flippable, copyable phenomena can make up information media. Interoperable information media can make up a computer. Systems analysts have long been familiar with such techniques when specifying an 'architecture' of layered abstract requirements for the physical design of 'applications' and other technology (- we sometimes jokingly call what Marletto calls 'counterfactuals', '-ilities', - the set of requirements like usability, reliability and recoverability, and they are an important part of the on-line, automated world we experience every day). As such, the book feels like it floats in a vacuum, set apart from other lines of current thinking, but that is wrong, it doesn't.
Marletto conjectures that this generalised systematic counterfactual analysis can provide a more productive foundation for science, fixing the well-known issues with its laws, particularly where classical and quantum physics collide, and expanding its scope to conceptual phenomena like information and knowledge. She proposes that her generalised method will allow us to use counterfactuals associated with information and knowledge to create new physical laws relevant to information systems and knowledge management (or, as I say, explain why established practice, discovered by other methods including the study of systems theory, already works). She shows that if this way of thinking is incorporated into the scientific method, these disciplines, that we have traditionally thought of as outside physics, can be studied and exploited alongside other physical systems, opening up a new realm of opportunities and possibilities.
April 7, 2022
After having read the bulk of this book twice, I both admire it and am disappointed by it.
As an introduction to what the author believes is a completely new and revolutionary field of thought, one that is fairly obscure, it is pretty illuminating. In essence, the argument is that there is a deeper and more complete understanding that we can have, right now, about the universe, and it comes by framing the discussion to be about what can and cannot occur in the universe, and how information and knowledge can be incorporated into physics.
Dr. Marletto does a fairly good job of providing just enough physics, at a low enough level, for most people to understand what impact her ideas might have. Reading it got me to appreciate information theory and view the universe in a different way. Not sure what I am going to do with this new perspective, but like the book says, one should always be growing, exploring, and creating. I would recommend it to anyone interested in a contemporary exploration of the rules governing the universe.
Going deeper into the book, I am less enthusiastic. The vignettes that the author provides to act as "refreshers" along the way fall pretty flat and add essentially nothing. Her understanding of biology, particularly what DNA can and cannot do, is lacking. Most people would not come out of this book understanding anything about quantum computing, or really any of the implications of what the author is saying, which was frustrating. Additionally, more and better examples are needed in general to illustrate her argument. A definition and exploration of information and knowledge are central to the book, but for the most part they are mentioned only at the level of they are reduced to bits or the most basic of transformations. I get that this is to reduce these concepts to the level that physicists are comfortable with, but not going beyond these examples is extremely unsatisfying. Finally, I am straight up unconvinced by other arguments - there is a misreading of Shakespeare in the first chapter, and the idea that short lived messages such as words written in foam are not information media, but something that lasts longer, say a post-it note that breaks down in a week, is, seems arbitrary to me. I have a few other issues but will not bring them all up here.
Overall, though, it has given me a lot to think about, and I am glad that I read it. I look forward to understanding the physics more deeply and seeing what the author comes out with in the future.
As an introduction to what the author believes is a completely new and revolutionary field of thought, one that is fairly obscure, it is pretty illuminating. In essence, the argument is that there is a deeper and more complete understanding that we can have, right now, about the universe, and it comes by framing the discussion to be about what can and cannot occur in the universe, and how information and knowledge can be incorporated into physics.
Dr. Marletto does a fairly good job of providing just enough physics, at a low enough level, for most people to understand what impact her ideas might have. Reading it got me to appreciate information theory and view the universe in a different way. Not sure what I am going to do with this new perspective, but like the book says, one should always be growing, exploring, and creating. I would recommend it to anyone interested in a contemporary exploration of the rules governing the universe.
Going deeper into the book, I am less enthusiastic. The vignettes that the author provides to act as "refreshers" along the way fall pretty flat and add essentially nothing. Her understanding of biology, particularly what DNA can and cannot do, is lacking. Most people would not come out of this book understanding anything about quantum computing, or really any of the implications of what the author is saying, which was frustrating. Additionally, more and better examples are needed in general to illustrate her argument. A definition and exploration of information and knowledge are central to the book, but for the most part they are mentioned only at the level of they are reduced to bits or the most basic of transformations. I get that this is to reduce these concepts to the level that physicists are comfortable with, but not going beyond these examples is extremely unsatisfying. Finally, I am straight up unconvinced by other arguments - there is a misreading of Shakespeare in the first chapter, and the idea that short lived messages such as words written in foam are not information media, but something that lasts longer, say a post-it note that breaks down in a week, is, seems arbitrary to me. I have a few other issues but will not bring them all up here.
Overall, though, it has given me a lot to think about, and I am glad that I read it. I look forward to understanding the physics more deeply and seeing what the author comes out with in the future.
July 7, 2023
The review that got me interested in this book is right on par with my sense having made it through. Conceptually interesting, but the cadence and story telling is so challenging it makes this a “I do not recommend” for all but the most valiant hearted. Honestly I think a TED talk or podcast with the author might be a better way to engage given the simplicity of the concept.
The essence of Marletto’s philosophy is that science should be more interested in counterfactuals, what can and cannot be, rather than just measurements.
Counterfactual was a new term to me and friend gave me and example that helped form some intuition around it. She said they test children for counterfactual thinking in studies at various ages. When asked about a bowl of water a child that has reach led counterfactual understanding knows that when you turn the bowl over the water will spill everywhere. A child that hasn’t reached this level does not connect what is, the bowl of water, with what could be, the counterfactual of the water spilling of the bowl is overturned.
Marletto applies the counterfactual thinking to information theory (seeing knowledge as a something that exists in both consciousness and unconscious system) and quantum theory. The goal is to more deeply underpin and unify observations of the world and create intuition and extrapolation that would be impossible otherwise.
This rhetorical approach does really resonate with me. I think driving toward counterfactual understanding is what fires my interest in evolution and consciousness, so in the sense that the book gave me language around how I like to think about the world, it was a success, it was just a slog. I have a particular gripe with anecdotal interludes. They seem so irrelevant and self indulgent, like some kind of afterthought an editor asked for to pad out the page count and make it seem like more of a pop science book.
The essence of Marletto’s philosophy is that science should be more interested in counterfactuals, what can and cannot be, rather than just measurements.
Counterfactual was a new term to me and friend gave me and example that helped form some intuition around it. She said they test children for counterfactual thinking in studies at various ages. When asked about a bowl of water a child that has reach led counterfactual understanding knows that when you turn the bowl over the water will spill everywhere. A child that hasn’t reached this level does not connect what is, the bowl of water, with what could be, the counterfactual of the water spilling of the bowl is overturned.
Marletto applies the counterfactual thinking to information theory (seeing knowledge as a something that exists in both consciousness and unconscious system) and quantum theory. The goal is to more deeply underpin and unify observations of the world and create intuition and extrapolation that would be impossible otherwise.
This rhetorical approach does really resonate with me. I think driving toward counterfactual understanding is what fires my interest in evolution and consciousness, so in the sense that the book gave me language around how I like to think about the world, it was a success, it was just a slog. I have a particular gripe with anecdotal interludes. They seem so irrelevant and self indulgent, like some kind of afterthought an editor asked for to pad out the page count and make it seem like more of a pop science book.
August 5, 2021
An interesting introduction to a proposed new, meta-theory of physics, the Constructor Theory. Introduced by one of the pioneers of Quantum Computing, David Deutsch, Constructor Theory aims to express the laws of physics using a set of different fundamental principles, than what are in use today. The theory adds to the existing body of debate as to what properties can be considered 'more fundamental' (e.g : Unitarity or Conservation of Quantum Information) by using the mechanisms and properties of a framework built around the new concept of a Constructor.
The theory makes interesting and bold claims but I am not totally sold on the proposed ideas, yet. However, the theory is in its developmental stages so I definitely look forward to hearing from the people working on it.
The book itself is a nice read and Chiara Marletto does a great job of keeping the content informal and accessible to people without a background in advanced physics. However, for people who do have a decent background in physics (such as myself), the book will appear to be unnecessarily verbose. But then, the author never claims that this book is intended for such an audience anyway. I do have a gripe though : the book does deal with several topics where ideas can be more easily conveyed by diagrams and visuals but the author is slightly inconsistent in her usage of such devices. As an example, the chapter on Quantum Information has a fair few visual aids but the chapters preceding it, such as dynamical systems, do not have a single one. I do believe that there is room for a lot of improvement here and if the improvements are made in a future edition, I can add another star to my current rating.
The theory makes interesting and bold claims but I am not totally sold on the proposed ideas, yet. However, the theory is in its developmental stages so I definitely look forward to hearing from the people working on it.
The book itself is a nice read and Chiara Marletto does a great job of keeping the content informal and accessible to people without a background in advanced physics. However, for people who do have a decent background in physics (such as myself), the book will appear to be unnecessarily verbose. But then, the author never claims that this book is intended for such an audience anyway. I do have a gripe though : the book does deal with several topics where ideas can be more easily conveyed by diagrams and visuals but the author is slightly inconsistent in her usage of such devices. As an example, the chapter on Quantum Information has a fair few visual aids but the chapters preceding it, such as dynamical systems, do not have a single one. I do believe that there is room for a lot of improvement here and if the improvements are made in a future edition, I can add another star to my current rating.
December 10, 2021
I have to admit, I feel like I need to read this again from the beginning. I've caught glimpses, a few tantalising hints of a promised land that's supposed to unify not just quantum physics and general relativity, but human comprehension to boot. Mine, alack, seems to have sorely fallen short here. I'll have to dust my jacket off and try again.
November 23, 2022
I'm intrigued by the idea of looking at the universe in a different way. Constructor theory uses the idea of starting with what is and isn't possible and replicable in physical systems and deriving the basic laws of physics from there. It can perhaps be used in the much same way that math allows you to describe the world through algebra, geometry or topology with each describing essentially the same universe, but with such different points of view that problems that are hard in one system become much easier in another. And once you have different parallel ways of describing the world, you can shuttle back and forth between the different systems to solve complex problems that defy solution when viewed from any single perspective, as Andrew Wiles famously did in his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
This is the promise, but I'm not sure whether constructor theory can deliver on it. Sometimes Ms. Marletto's claims seemed trivial to me and not really different from an intelligently phrased argument made in conventional physics. But maybe I was missing something or maybe this was just a function of her writing this book for a broad audience. I strained a little when she used the terms counterfactual, knowledge and catalyst in ways which are different from the conventional meanings of those words and that sometimes made her arguments unnecessarily difficult to follow. And I balked at the idea of knowledge as algorithm. To me knowledge is something more than that. I believe that there probably important physical processes that defy algorithmic description, but maybe that's a definitional problem that could be avoided if she just said that that physical systems often exhibit important algorithmic properties that can be productively studied using constructor theory.
This is the promise, but I'm not sure whether constructor theory can deliver on it. Sometimes Ms. Marletto's claims seemed trivial to me and not really different from an intelligently phrased argument made in conventional physics. But maybe I was missing something or maybe this was just a function of her writing this book for a broad audience. I strained a little when she used the terms counterfactual, knowledge and catalyst in ways which are different from the conventional meanings of those words and that sometimes made her arguments unnecessarily difficult to follow. And I balked at the idea of knowledge as algorithm. To me knowledge is something more than that. I believe that there probably important physical processes that defy algorithmic description, but maybe that's a definitional problem that could be avoided if she just said that that physical systems often exhibit important algorithmic properties that can be productively studied using constructor theory.
June 13, 2022
An interesting look at how we can move forward in physics by redefining and creating new theories with counterfactuals. While physics thus far has focused on the physical realities of a given system and used that to create our current theories, this often fails to capture the complete picture — which includes alternate possibilities and impossibilities. You don't have to be a physicist to like this book but you should probably be interested in STEM and/or philosophy.
October 5, 2022
Original, but hard to stick with
June 23, 2022
Chiara sviluppa ipotesi molto interessanti presentate in modo chiaro, semplice e accattivante.
Tra tutte spiccano l'interpretazione del secondo principio della termodinamica e i concetti di conoscenza e informazione come entità fisiche.
Cito: ".... alcuni problemi aperti tradizionalmente etichettati come spirituali, mistici e persino religiosi possono, tramite un mutamento di prospettiva, trovare una salda collocazione nel dominio della scienza, senza appellarsi a dogmi o a idee e soprannaturali... il primo passo necessario per risolvere quei problemi con metodi scientifici si avvale dei controfattuali. "
Tra tutte spiccano l'interpretazione del secondo principio della termodinamica e i concetti di conoscenza e informazione come entità fisiche.
Cito: ".... alcuni problemi aperti tradizionalmente etichettati come spirituali, mistici e persino religiosi possono, tramite un mutamento di prospettiva, trovare una salda collocazione nel dominio della scienza, senza appellarsi a dogmi o a idee e soprannaturali... il primo passo necessario per risolvere quei problemi con metodi scientifici si avvale dei controfattuali. "
October 4, 2021
Читается как пересказ книги "Начало бесконечности" от Дэвида Дойча. Единственное отличие заключается в переложение полученных понятий на мир физики.
November 30, 2022
The book alternates between pop-sci and short stories. This is a great approach, but the creative writing part needs more work (I wonder how much the editor was involved with this part). The stories are too on the nose, and not really illustrating any of their points. Instead they are just preaching them through one-dimensional characters. This ironically reminds of some pseudo-science literature (the irony is that the actual science in this book is anything but pseudo). Because of this I struggled and speeded through most of the story chapters, and didn't really feel I got much out of them. This is too bad, as the author obviously has an affinity for creative writing, the story motives are imaginative, and it's a wonderful tool to illustrate the abstract concepts presented. I hope the author manages to put in more work into that part in the following editions.
The pop-sci part of the book suffers from a similar problem, although it does deliver in explaining the topic. The topic itself is very interesting, and the author does not lack the knowledge nor the enthusiasm (and the enthusiasm is contagious as you progress through the book). However, as someone with a STEM education and a big interest in the topic, I did again find myself speeding through a lot of the content, and wanting for more concise explanations. This is however a book for a wider audience, and not only for people who already went through the STEM drill, so I'm probaby better off to just go and read some papers and watch lectures.
Overall, content-wise I got my shot of philosophy and physics, and learned some fascinating ideas. I hope the book lives to get newer and improved editions, as the topic is fascinating and worth explaining to wider audiences.
The pop-sci part of the book suffers from a similar problem, although it does deliver in explaining the topic. The topic itself is very interesting, and the author does not lack the knowledge nor the enthusiasm (and the enthusiasm is contagious as you progress through the book). However, as someone with a STEM education and a big interest in the topic, I did again find myself speeding through a lot of the content, and wanting for more concise explanations. This is however a book for a wider audience, and not only for people who already went through the STEM drill, so I'm probaby better off to just go and read some papers and watch lectures.
Overall, content-wise I got my shot of philosophy and physics, and learned some fascinating ideas. I hope the book lives to get newer and improved editions, as the topic is fascinating and worth explaining to wider audiences.
September 14, 2021
I came across Maetto's work on counterfactuals and universal constructors a few months back and have wanted to learn a bit more about this approach to theoretical physics so I decided to give her book a shot. It's a lot more approachable than I would have thought and on the whole was great.
The idea of reasoning up from counterfactuals instead of our approach to physics today is super interesting and that's more or less what this book is about. Finding a new way of thinking of the universe with the goal of finding solutions to problems we can't solve (ie. A universal theory of gravity which combines general relativity and quantum mechanics).
Don't think about what we observe, think about what is possible and impossible, and reason up from there. That's the gist.
The idea of reasoning up from counterfactuals instead of our approach to physics today is super interesting and that's more or less what this book is about. Finding a new way of thinking of the universe with the goal of finding solutions to problems we can't solve (ie. A universal theory of gravity which combines general relativity and quantum mechanics).
Don't think about what we observe, think about what is possible and impossible, and reason up from there. That's the gist.
October 25, 2022
This is an infuriating book. Written about possibly the most important topic in physics and even science in general to have appeared in this millenium, it promises enlightenment, then denies it.
Marletto knows her stuff. Just browsing through her articles on arxiv.org is impressive, and she skips from science to science with the ease of Schrödinger (the one with the ambiguous cat, but also with What is life, the first book to predict DNA a long timebefore its discovery). Unfortunately, when she writes for the layperson, she assumes that her reader is a toddler, unable to understand anything beyond coloured wooden blocks and fairy tales. It takes her fully half of the book to get beyond general platitudes, and only the final chapter contains vague hints of the subject that the book was supposed to be about.
This would be justifiable if the book were aimed at primary school readers. But people who pick up a book about the new foundation of sciences are, I am sure, able to digest the concept of wave inerference without a 120 page lead-up.
Pity, I really wanted to like this.
Marletto knows her stuff. Just browsing through her articles on arxiv.org is impressive, and she skips from science to science with the ease of Schrödinger (the one with the ambiguous cat, but also with What is life, the first book to predict DNA a long timebefore its discovery). Unfortunately, when she writes for the layperson, she assumes that her reader is a toddler, unable to understand anything beyond coloured wooden blocks and fairy tales. It takes her fully half of the book to get beyond general platitudes, and only the final chapter contains vague hints of the subject that the book was supposed to be about.
This would be justifiable if the book were aimed at primary school readers. But people who pick up a book about the new foundation of sciences are, I am sure, able to digest the concept of wave inerference without a 120 page lead-up.
Pity, I really wanted to like this.
June 6, 2021
It promises too much. I hope CT delivers, truly, but the only reasonable attitude here is one of healthy skepticism.
The audible narrator was flat, would recommend text version.
The audible narrator was flat, would recommend text version.
February 28, 2022
The Science of Can and Can’t proposes a reformulation of physics using counterfactuals: properties of systems that describe what is or isn’t fundamentally possible. Counterfactuals can be contrasted against dynamical laws that predict a future state given an initial set of conditions.
I am not sure if I liked Science of Can and Can’t. It isn’t clear there is a “so what” to this reformulation and on some level, the significance of the book will only be borne out in the fullness of time.
But insofar as any Feyerabend-style change in reference frame is useful for accelerating the creation of new knowledge – I’m all for it.
----------
David Deutsch kicks us off with his flavor of “Great Stagnation theory” in the foreword: “In fundamental physics in particular, there has been less and less exploration of transformative ideas – and new modes of explanation are not even being attempted” [xi]. Why has physics stagnated since the 1950s?
Marletto presents counterfactuals as the antidote: “The assumption that all fundamental explanations in science must be expressed only in terms of what happens, with little or no reference to counterfactuals is now getting in the way of progress” [xviii-xix]. It is not something inherent to the questions we are studying that poses a fundamental limitation, but rather how we explain phenomena.
That’s a bold claim. Let’s substantiate it a bit by examining where physics without counterfactuals leaves room for improvement:
• Think about perpetual motion machines. Dynamical laws will tell you that they can’t be built given initial conditions. But in a counterfactual formulation we can make the statement “[a perpetual motion machine] cannot be built under any of the initial conditions and any of the actual dynamical laws” [61]. The counterfactual is a stronger and more precise statement.
• Adding machines. Marletto makes the point that the possibility of an ideal adding machine that never approximates or makes errors is not permitted with dynamical explanations: “even the enumeration of all possible scenarios that would not happen if a given initial condition were to be set would not express the possibility of an adder, either” [60-61]
• Free will and unpredictable action is problematic in the dynamical law conception which always gives us probabilistic outputs given fixed inputs [62-63].
Later in the book she gives another example about a glass of iced tea left outside on a hot day. Gibbs free energy would tell you that the spontaneous reaction would be ice melting and tea equilibrating at the temperature of the environment. But this is a statistical statement about the likely future state of the system. It is not a statement about the exact movement of particles and energy. In fact, it is possible that the ice cube would spontaneously re-form [181]. When we talk about heat transformations as irreversible and work transformations as reversible we use a crude heuristic. Any configuration of particles and energy in a system is possible. “The statistical form of the second law [of thermodynamics] can predict only irreversibility with high probability – not with certainty” [183].
Counterfactuals also allow us to describe new things like information in physical terms that dynamical laws do not allow.
A physical system can be said to hold information if:
“1. It can be set to any of at least two states. (The flip operation is possible, under the laws of physics)” and “2. Each of those states can be copied (The copy operation is possible, under the laws of physics”. [85]
One neat corollary is that information can be said to be interoperable – that it “can be copied from one medium to the other irrespective of their physical details” [87]. This aligns well with Deutsch’s view that there is only one type of knowledge and that we have every reason to believe that we should be able to communicate and exchange information with alien life.
Knowledge can also be described in physical terms: knowledge is information that is “cable of enabling its own preservation” [149]. I’ll pick on this one a bit because the time period of preservation seems very relevant. Nonetheless, it’s probably valuable to have a view of what knowledge truly means in physical terms.
The final chapter takes counterfactual science in some interesting directions. For one, we can begin to think about the physical basis of creativity now that we know what knowledge and information are [218]. Is the human brain some kind of sophisticated random bit generator? I’d love to keep pulling this thread and see where we can land and what we can learn about the nature of cognition. If knowledge is self-propagating information, then creativity becomes the physical basis for escaping death a la Ernest Becker [220].
----------
A friend told me that he discussed Marletto with several physicist friends who were both dismissive and annoyed by The Science of Can and Can’t. I can’t help but think we are barking up the right tree.
I am not sure if I liked Science of Can and Can’t. It isn’t clear there is a “so what” to this reformulation and on some level, the significance of the book will only be borne out in the fullness of time.
But insofar as any Feyerabend-style change in reference frame is useful for accelerating the creation of new knowledge – I’m all for it.
----------
David Deutsch kicks us off with his flavor of “Great Stagnation theory” in the foreword: “In fundamental physics in particular, there has been less and less exploration of transformative ideas – and new modes of explanation are not even being attempted” [xi]. Why has physics stagnated since the 1950s?
Marletto presents counterfactuals as the antidote: “The assumption that all fundamental explanations in science must be expressed only in terms of what happens, with little or no reference to counterfactuals is now getting in the way of progress” [xviii-xix]. It is not something inherent to the questions we are studying that poses a fundamental limitation, but rather how we explain phenomena.
That’s a bold claim. Let’s substantiate it a bit by examining where physics without counterfactuals leaves room for improvement:
• Think about perpetual motion machines. Dynamical laws will tell you that they can’t be built given initial conditions. But in a counterfactual formulation we can make the statement “[a perpetual motion machine] cannot be built under any of the initial conditions and any of the actual dynamical laws” [61]. The counterfactual is a stronger and more precise statement.
• Adding machines. Marletto makes the point that the possibility of an ideal adding machine that never approximates or makes errors is not permitted with dynamical explanations: “even the enumeration of all possible scenarios that would not happen if a given initial condition were to be set would not express the possibility of an adder, either” [60-61]
• Free will and unpredictable action is problematic in the dynamical law conception which always gives us probabilistic outputs given fixed inputs [62-63].
Later in the book she gives another example about a glass of iced tea left outside on a hot day. Gibbs free energy would tell you that the spontaneous reaction would be ice melting and tea equilibrating at the temperature of the environment. But this is a statistical statement about the likely future state of the system. It is not a statement about the exact movement of particles and energy. In fact, it is possible that the ice cube would spontaneously re-form [181]. When we talk about heat transformations as irreversible and work transformations as reversible we use a crude heuristic. Any configuration of particles and energy in a system is possible. “The statistical form of the second law [of thermodynamics] can predict only irreversibility with high probability – not with certainty” [183].
Counterfactuals also allow us to describe new things like information in physical terms that dynamical laws do not allow.
A physical system can be said to hold information if:
“1. It can be set to any of at least two states. (The flip operation is possible, under the laws of physics)” and “2. Each of those states can be copied (The copy operation is possible, under the laws of physics”. [85]
One neat corollary is that information can be said to be interoperable – that it “can be copied from one medium to the other irrespective of their physical details” [87]. This aligns well with Deutsch’s view that there is only one type of knowledge and that we have every reason to believe that we should be able to communicate and exchange information with alien life.
Knowledge can also be described in physical terms: knowledge is information that is “cable of enabling its own preservation” [149]. I’ll pick on this one a bit because the time period of preservation seems very relevant. Nonetheless, it’s probably valuable to have a view of what knowledge truly means in physical terms.
The final chapter takes counterfactual science in some interesting directions. For one, we can begin to think about the physical basis of creativity now that we know what knowledge and information are [218]. Is the human brain some kind of sophisticated random bit generator? I’d love to keep pulling this thread and see where we can land and what we can learn about the nature of cognition. If knowledge is self-propagating information, then creativity becomes the physical basis for escaping death a la Ernest Becker [220].
----------
A friend told me that he discussed Marletto with several physicist friends who were both dismissive and annoyed by The Science of Can and Can’t. I can’t help but think we are barking up the right tree.
December 30, 2022
This book is all about "counterfactuals". Confusingly, it ignores the dictionary definition of "counterfactual" (counter to the facts) and assigns a different meaning entirely. This is the first hurdle among many. Despite some shortcomings, if you approach this book with an open mind and patience, you will learn some thought-provoking ideas.
In The Science of Can and Can't, Marletto presents a new framework for exploring science. Counterfactuals express a series of transformations which are either possible (can) or impossible (can't). For example, classical information is described not in terms of bits (0s and 1s), but as having two counterfactuals. For information to exist, the first counterfactual declares that a system can be in another state. Secondly, the state must be copyable from the system. So a lightbulb contains information because it can be switched off and one can observe (copy) the state of the lightbulb. It is a rather neat way of thinking. The book continues to describe other parts of physics in this manner.
I found not all the content is presented in an easily understood manner. In particular, the chapter on quantum information left me baffled. Marletto quickly dismisses Schrodinger's Cat Experiment, then proceeds with what I found to be a much more complex explanation. It might have just been me, but on the first reading of this chapter, I could not grok the author's insights into quantum information.
Much of the explanation is needlessly littered with anecdotes, word-soup and fluff. It detracts from the ideas being presented. I got the occasional chuckle such as from "when it is not raining--in countries like England, where I live, this hardly ever happens, but we can use our imaginations" since I visited England recently. But you can see how this style of writing has little purpose beyond drawing out the word-count.
All that being said, Marletto appears to be quite accomplished (as is evident from arXiv). I fear this book has been dumb-downed in order to appeal to a broader audience, sell more copies and fund future research. I look forward to reading deeper into some of Marletto's peer-reviewed papers in hopes of getting a better appreciation for the topic.
I found the penultimate chapter "Work and Heat" and the final conclusions to be rather good. They describe some unsolved problems in fundamental physics where counterfactuals could provide value. Marletto further describes the active research involved in creating a testable experiment to validate the usefulness of counterfactuals.
Overall, I find the general premise and idea of this book to be strong. There are some shortcomings (fluff, lack of rigor) which make it hard to digest. The book was worth a read as long as you keep an open mind.
In The Science of Can and Can't, Marletto presents a new framework for exploring science. Counterfactuals express a series of transformations which are either possible (can) or impossible (can't). For example, classical information is described not in terms of bits (0s and 1s), but as having two counterfactuals. For information to exist, the first counterfactual declares that a system can be in another state. Secondly, the state must be copyable from the system. So a lightbulb contains information because it can be switched off and one can observe (copy) the state of the lightbulb. It is a rather neat way of thinking. The book continues to describe other parts of physics in this manner.
I found not all the content is presented in an easily understood manner. In particular, the chapter on quantum information left me baffled. Marletto quickly dismisses Schrodinger's Cat Experiment, then proceeds with what I found to be a much more complex explanation. It might have just been me, but on the first reading of this chapter, I could not grok the author's insights into quantum information.
Much of the explanation is needlessly littered with anecdotes, word-soup and fluff. It detracts from the ideas being presented. I got the occasional chuckle such as from "when it is not raining--in countries like England, where I live, this hardly ever happens, but we can use our imaginations" since I visited England recently. But you can see how this style of writing has little purpose beyond drawing out the word-count.
All that being said, Marletto appears to be quite accomplished (as is evident from arXiv). I fear this book has been dumb-downed in order to appeal to a broader audience, sell more copies and fund future research. I look forward to reading deeper into some of Marletto's peer-reviewed papers in hopes of getting a better appreciation for the topic.
I found the penultimate chapter "Work and Heat" and the final conclusions to be rather good. They describe some unsolved problems in fundamental physics where counterfactuals could provide value. Marletto further describes the active research involved in creating a testable experiment to validate the usefulness of counterfactuals.
Overall, I find the general premise and idea of this book to be strong. There are some shortcomings (fluff, lack of rigor) which make it hard to digest. The book was worth a read as long as you keep an open mind.
July 27, 2022
Many science books written for the general public are extremely interesting, but not many of them are so beautifully written. All of the chapters, which always start using everyday-life examples (often from Chiara Marletto's personal life), are concluded by short pieces of fiction that are both enjoyable and do an excellent job adding another layer of meaning to what has just been explained in a chapter. In his foreword, Marletto's colleague David Deutsch (author of the equally brilliant book "The Fabric of Reality" as well as "The Beginning of Infinity, which is on my to-read list) compares her writing to Douglas Hofstadter's classic "Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid". After finishing "The Science of Can and Can't", I have to admit that I agree.
Counterfactuals - the notion of what is physically possible or physically impossible to happen - is an extremely powerful and promising tool of explaining (to quote the late, great Douglas Adams) Life, the Universe, and Everything. Traditional physical explanations, relying solely on cause and effect aka. laws of motion, fail to incorporate concepts like information and knowledge into physics. Counterfactuals, however, provide a convincing way to do so. As a computer scientist, I'm happy that computability seems to be more than an incidental property of some machines we happened to build, but a basic principle of reality. Other examples include quantum information and a counterfactual explanation of work and heat, which is more plausible than traditional explanations of thermodynamics.
Constructor Theory, the physical theory Marletto, Deutsch, Vlatko Vedral and others have been working on, is a fascinating way of understanding physics. The reasoning in the book and the various papers at https://www.constructortheory.org is sound and uncircumventable, since it is all in the tradition of Karl Popper's philosophy of scientific reasoning, i.e. falsifiable. The book is a wonderful first exploration journey into this realm (an analogy the author herself uses in the introduction and as a concluding remark). It shows that there is a lot of uncharted territory, which will be explored in many adventures to come.
Counterfactuals - the notion of what is physically possible or physically impossible to happen - is an extremely powerful and promising tool of explaining (to quote the late, great Douglas Adams) Life, the Universe, and Everything. Traditional physical explanations, relying solely on cause and effect aka. laws of motion, fail to incorporate concepts like information and knowledge into physics. Counterfactuals, however, provide a convincing way to do so. As a computer scientist, I'm happy that computability seems to be more than an incidental property of some machines we happened to build, but a basic principle of reality. Other examples include quantum information and a counterfactual explanation of work and heat, which is more plausible than traditional explanations of thermodynamics.
Constructor Theory, the physical theory Marletto, Deutsch, Vlatko Vedral and others have been working on, is a fascinating way of understanding physics. The reasoning in the book and the various papers at https://www.constructortheory.org is sound and uncircumventable, since it is all in the tradition of Karl Popper's philosophy of scientific reasoning, i.e. falsifiable. The book is a wonderful first exploration journey into this realm (an analogy the author herself uses in the introduction and as a concluding remark). It shows that there is a lot of uncharted territory, which will be explored in many adventures to come.
August 15, 2021
I'm conflicted about this one. I absolutely think it's worth reading, but it left me feeling like a bit like Alexandros, to borrow from Chiara. I never quite felt like it reached a crescendo, which I felt especially want for after the author so many times teased when things would be explored later in the book.
The argument that science is in need of a fundamentally new paradigm was well developed, and clear enough early in the book. But other than that the real meat of the ideas is a handful of examples that are summarized in the last chapter. I would have liked to go one level deeper, but instead the chapters alternated with vignettes that went one level shallower, leaving the book feeling even more dilute than it did otherwise. However, I applaud Chiara for trying something new with these, and I feel they were mostly well written and will be appreciated by readers who are into that sort of thing.
My last quibble is that I was never convinced by the section describing why stirring tea is necessarily irreversible, as the pulley framework of mechanical energy felt tautological to me.
Overall, Chiara is a talented writer whose secondary interest in literature was clearly reflected in this work. While she got her main point across well, it left me scientifically wanting more depth for the amount of words on the page.
The argument that science is in need of a fundamentally new paradigm was well developed, and clear enough early in the book. But other than that the real meat of the ideas is a handful of examples that are summarized in the last chapter. I would have liked to go one level deeper, but instead the chapters alternated with vignettes that went one level shallower, leaving the book feeling even more dilute than it did otherwise. However, I applaud Chiara for trying something new with these, and I feel they were mostly well written and will be appreciated by readers who are into that sort of thing.
My last quibble is that I was never convinced by the section describing why stirring tea is necessarily irreversible, as the pulley framework of mechanical energy felt tautological to me.
Overall, Chiara is a talented writer whose secondary interest in literature was clearly reflected in this work. While she got her main point across well, it left me scientifically wanting more depth for the amount of words on the page.
October 17, 2022
A gentle introduction to Constructor theory, carefully and passionately written by the physicist who, together with original creator David Deutsch, is pushing forward this new way of looking at foundations based on counterfactuals. According to the theory, counterfactuals are about what can or cannot be done (possibilities and impossibilities), so though they are higher level constraints they are more fundamental than dynamical laws; and importantly, they allow to define objectively concepts like information and knowledge to make them part of physics, at last.
This little book is a nice and inspiring read, with subject matter chapters alternated with short stories of fiction. The intellectual and stylistic inheritance from Deutsch is evident all over (except in the stories), and it's plain to see how Constructor theory is rooted in the ideas of Deutsch right from his first book. There are no extended notes and no extended list of further readings. In fact, the treatment is kept at a rather high level all over, which is a little disappointing for those readers looking for deeper and more technical content and which is perhaps the only limit of this otherwise very enjoyable book. The promise of Constructor theory is high, and it will be very interesting to see what will come out of it in coming years.
This little book is a nice and inspiring read, with subject matter chapters alternated with short stories of fiction. The intellectual and stylistic inheritance from Deutsch is evident all over (except in the stories), and it's plain to see how Constructor theory is rooted in the ideas of Deutsch right from his first book. There are no extended notes and no extended list of further readings. In fact, the treatment is kept at a rather high level all over, which is a little disappointing for those readers looking for deeper and more technical content and which is perhaps the only limit of this otherwise very enjoyable book. The promise of Constructor theory is high, and it will be very interesting to see what will come out of it in coming years.
November 21, 2022
I heard something good about this book and thought I'd check it out. I found it quite disappointing and, after less than 20 pages, I'm going to quit. It started when the author quotes Prospero's speech near the end of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and applies it incorrectly. Then the author speaks approvingly of Richard Dawkin's idiotic book "The Selfish Gene." (How can gene be selfish? It has no mind, no consciousness, no intent, no purpose.) The author adds to Dawkin's idiocy by the information contained in a gene constitutes knowledge. Yes, she does provide the term with a definition that differs from the normal use of the term, but she does so in a book aimed at people lime me who are not scientists. She's using a term she knows will be misinterpreted by her audience, causing them to draw unwarranted conclusions. Finally, she is righting about counter factuals, which are things that are allowed by the laws of physics. Yet she also uses the phrase "no design physical laws", a term that presumes its conclusion (called "begging the question".)
To be honest, her book may be of value to some people, but I can't get around the bad interpretation of Shakespeare, the extravagent use of flawed metaphors, and the logical fallacies. If your introductory chapter is this bad, I don't see it getting better.
To be honest, her book may be of value to some people, but I can't get around the bad interpretation of Shakespeare, the extravagent use of flawed metaphors, and the logical fallacies. If your introductory chapter is this bad, I don't see it getting better.
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