Rivers, like men, only learn why they were born near their end. – José Saramago (1922-2010)
“Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?” – W.E.B. Du Bois
乌托邦（utopia）和反乌托邦（dystopia）出现在许多有名的小说里。
investing
- 20260901: Global Bond Selloff Sends Yields to the Highest Level Since 2008
Debt is not a problem if the underlying economy is good and healthy. the problem now is that the high inflation is driven by high oil price because of already half-year Iran-war and the close of Hormuz. The higher bond yields raise the cost of borrowing money. it’s a signal of hiking the rates to the Fed from the market?
Global bond yields climbed back to the highest level in almost two decades as rising oil prices fuel inflation concerns and investors ramp up expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates.
The latest catalyst driving yields higher has been Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh’s speech at Jackson Hole on Friday, where he doubled down on his vow to finally tame inflation that’s outpaced the central bank’s target for five straight years. At the same time, fresh hostilities between the US and Iran have raised concerns about prolonged disruptions to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices higher.
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物理学界一百多年来的一个梦想就是统一已知的四个基本作用力：万有引力，电磁力，弱相互作用力和强相互作用力。世界物理学界奋斗了一百多年，离实现这个梦想还是遥遥无期。弱电统一理论算是最为令人兴奋的成绩，把电磁相互作用和弱相互作用统一了起来，可是统一强相互作用和万有引力就不那么容易了。特别是万有引力，似乎和量子理论天生就互相排斥。20世纪的理论物理学家们坚持用广义相对论来描述万有引力。可是广义相对论是一个没法重整化（也就是没法克服无穷大）的理论。全世界的理论物理学家都一筹莫展。于是有人便提出所谓的“弦论”，说基本粒子不是一个个的质点，而是一些不停震荡的线段，卷缩在普朗克长度（大约 1.616 × 10⁻35 米）的微空间里。后来弦理论家们又把他们的理论和另一个革命性的理论 – 超对称理论 – 相接合，成为超弦理论。基本粒子从维度等于零的质点变成了维度等于一的线段，那么描述这些基本粒子的空间维度当然也就要增加。为了描述这些极短的微观线段，他们需要六个额外的空间维度，叫做“内部维度”，加上宏观的三维空间和一维时间，总共需要十维时空。
理论家们说，这额外维度不是宏观维度，而是蜷缩在普朗克长度的微观空间中，无法观测的。这和邱成桐教授的六维宏观空间迥异。问题是，这样的超弦模型不是唯一的，而是有五个模型同时存在互相竞争。到底哪一个才是真正的上帝的旨意呢？不知道！真理是唯一的。物理理论不能模棱两可，更不能模棱五可。后来有人想到了一种心理安慰：说不定这五个超弦理论是一个十一维空间超弦理论在十维空间中的五种投影，那这五个不同版本也就不矛盾了。可是心理安慰毕竟只是心理安慰而已。问题并没有解决，反而增加了一个疑问：超弦理论到底是10维的还是11维的？所谓的“内部维度”，难道因为“卷缩”在普朗克长度的小空间中就成了独立于宏观空间的维度吗？量子力学讨论的也是微观世界的运动，量子力学中的微观空间和宏观空间是一个东西，并不是独立于宏观空间的独立维度。为什么到了普朗克长度微观空间就成了独立维度了？这是超弦理论家们的又一个忽悠。
20世纪理论物理把基本粒子分为两类，一类是费米子，自旋是半整数；一类是玻色子，自旋是整数。这两类粒子服从完全不同的统计规律。费米子服从泡利不相容原理，玻色子则不服从泡利不相容原理。费米子都有质量，比如质子和中子；传递相互作用的粒子都是玻色子，不一定有质量，比如光子。所以，按照粒子物理标准模型，费米子和玻色子是本质上根本不同的两类基本粒子。超对称理论的发明者异想天开，居然假设费米子和玻色子之间存在一种所谓的“超对称性”，并且给每一个基本粒子配上一个“伴子”，好像给太监们一个个都配上“对食”，让它们成家。这样一来，基本粒子的总数一夜之间就翻了一番，增加了几百个，比大跃进的产量还高。可是人们至今连超对称理论是否收敛都不知道。霍金说，要知道超对称理论是否收敛，需要一位研究生计算200年，还不知道这位学生会不会在演算到第二页就出错！一个连收敛问题都还没有解决的理论，能够在科学上站住脚吗？
格拉肖是世界著名的理论物理学家、美国科学院院士，1979年与温伯格、萨拉姆共同获得诺贝尔物理学奖，1976年获奥本海默奖，1991年获Erice科学和平奖。格拉肖对超弦理论有一段尖锐的批评：“超弦理论将演变出一些只有在未来的神学院里的神学家们导演的活动。自黑暗的中世纪以来，我们第一次看到崇高的科学研究最终的结局竟然是再次以信仰取代科学。”
另一位诺贝尔奖得主，高能物理学家里奇特 ，在《今日物理》杂志 2006年十月号上发表了一篇文章 “粒子物理理论：神学猜想还是实际知识”，批判超对称理论：“比如说，如果Higgs 质量平方发散，就发明超对称让它对数发散。这一发明的代价是带来124 个新的常数。我总觉得这代价太大。”
还有一位诺贝尔物理奖得主魏尔特曼先生，借用泡利的名言批判超弦理论“甚至连被称为错误都不够格 (It is not even wrong)”。魏尔特曼和他的学生胡佛特提出了规范场理论的数学形式。1977年魏尔特曼提出了一个方程使得预言顶夸克的质量成为可能，据此顶夸克于1995年在费米实验室被找到。这在当时是粒子物理界的大事。这师徒两于1999年获得诺贝尔物理奖。
超弦理论家们不仅给不出任何可供实验检验的物理量，他们甚至给不出超弦理论中的额外维度的物理意义。
人本能地对异质物体和异质思想的排斥性
LLMs impress the writers who do not want to write, the coders who don’t want to code, the researchers who don’t want to research, and the lawyers that don’t want to actually understand case law. Those that desperately tell you how powerfull AI is and that you simply must use it are looking for you to validate their own laziness or distaste for effort, and those who are impressed with LLM’s outputs tend to be people with low standards.
When this ends, so many people will ask how it happened, why nobody stopped it, and try and rationalize it within the systems they know. They’ll crave a bailout, even if they hate the companies, because the destruction of allowing things to wilt and die is so unusual within our society, and it’s scary to imagine them doing so.
We want a neat, easy explanation for the complexities of our world, and one of the larger problems of the AI bubble is that it’s largely catered to that need on every level.
Much of this isn’t even cynical, but is a product of believing in the systems and powers that be to make logical, rational decisions, rather than being guided by simplistic ideals like creating more growth at any cost, and thinking that because a number keeps going up, it’ll never go down, ignoring anything that would convince you otherwise.
Instead of having to deal with the very real problems that we’re at the end of hypergrowth and the decades-long massive returns of venture capital and reconciling with what’s increasingly looking like hundreds of billions of misallocated capital, everybody chooses to live in whatever reality makes them the least-anxious or most-excited.
They hope that somebody else will deal with the problem and that the system, which regularly mistreats, misleads and fails them, will prevail, as it always has.
book: Symbols of freedom: Slavery and resistance before the civil war, Matthew j. calvin
book: A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868, anne sarah rubin
Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America (2003)
book: Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000-1680 (Volume one of the Oxford History of the United States) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2026)
My life was a wandering; I never had a homeland. It was a matter of being constantly tossed about, without rest; nowhere and never did I find a home.
AbeBooks link