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A Personal Narrative

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I was very pleased to learn that I’m among this year’s recipients of a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Fellowships are mid-career awards, meant “to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.” This year 173 Fellowships were awarded, chosen from 3,100 applications. About half of the winners are in the creative arts, and the majority of those remaining are in the humanities and social sciences, leaving eighteen slots for natural scientists. Only two physicists were chosen, so it’s up to Philip Phillips and me to uphold the honor of our discipline.

The Guggenheim application includes a “Career Narrative” as well as a separate research proposal. I don’t like to share my research proposals around, mostly because I’m a theoretical physicist and what I actually end up doing rarely bears much resemblance to what I had previously planned to do. But I thought I could post my career narrative, if only on the chance that it might be useful to future fellowship applicants (or young students embarking on their own research careers). Be warned that it’s more personal than most things I write on the blog here, not to mention that it’s beastly long. Also, keep in mind that the purpose of the document was to convince people to give me money — as such, it falls pretty heavily on the side of grandiosity and self-justification. Be assured that in real life I remain meek and humble.

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I Wanna Live Forever

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If you’re one of those people who look the universe in the eyeball without flinching, choosing to accept uncomfortable truths when they are supported by the implacable judgment of Science, then you’ve probably acknowledged that sitting is bad for you. Like, really bad. If you’re not convinced, the conclusions are available in helpful infographic form; here’s an excerpt.

Sitting-Infographic

And, you know, I sit down an awful lot. Doing science, writing, eating, playing poker — my favorite activities are remarkably sitting-based.

So I’ve finally broken down and done something about it. On the good advice of Carl Zimmer, I’ve augmented my desk at work with a Varidesk on top. The desk itself was formerly used by Richard Feynman, so I wasn’t exactly going to give that up and replace it with a standing desk. But this little gizmo lets me spend most of my time at work on my feet instead of sitting on my butt, while preserving the previous furniture.

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It’s a pretty nifty device, actually. Room enough for my laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse pad, and the requisite few cups for coffee. Most importantly for a lazybones like me, it doesn’t force you to stand up absolutely all the time; gently pull some handles and the whole thing gently settles down to desktop level, ready for your normal chair-bound routine.

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We’ll see how the whole thing goes. It’s one thing to buy something that allows you to stand while working, it’s another to actually do it. But at least I feel like I’m trying to be healthier. I should go have a sundae to celebrate.

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New Course: The Higgs Boson and Beyond

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Happy to announce that I have a new course out with The Great Courses (produced by The Teaching Company). This one is called The Higgs Boson and Beyond, and consists of twelve half-hour lectures. I previously have done two other courses for them: Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time. Both of those were 24 lectures each, so this time we’re getting to the good stuff more quickly.

The inspiration for the course was, naturally, the 2012 discovery of the Higgs, and you’ll be unsurprised to learn that there is some overlap with my book The Particle at the End of the Universe. It’s certainly not just me reading the book, though; the lecture format is very different than the written word, and I’ve adjusted the topics and order appropriately. Here’s the lineup:

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  1. The Importance of the Higgs Boson
  2. Quantum Field Theory
  3. Atoms to Particles
  4. The Power of Symmetry
  5. The Higgs Field
  6. Mass and Energy
  7. Colliding Particles
  8. Particle Accelerators and Detectors
  9. The Large Hadron Collider
  10. Capturing the Higgs Boson
  11. Beyond the Standard Model
  12. Frontiers: Higgs in Space

Because it is a course, the presentation here is in a more strictly logical order than it is in the book, starting from quantum field theory and working our way up. It’s still aimed at a completely non-expert audience, though a bit of enthusiasm for physics will be helpful for grappling with the more challenging material. And it’s available in both audio-only or video — but I have to say they did a really nice job with the graphics this time around, so the video is worth having.

And it’s on sale! Don’t know how long that will last, but there’s a big difference between regular prices at The Great Courses and the sale prices. A bargain either way!

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The Meaning of Life

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I have been a crappy blogger, and I blame real life for getting in the way. (No, that’s not the meaning of life.) I keep meaning to say something more substantial about the BICEP2 controversy — in the meantime check out Raphael Flauger’s talk, Matias Zaldarriaga’s talk (slides), this paper by Mortonson and Seljak, or this blog post by Richard Easther.

At least I have been a productive scientist! One paper on the expected amount of inflation with Grant Remmen, and one on the evolution of complexity in closed systems with Scott Aaronson and Lauren Ouellette (no relation to Jennifer). Promise to blog about them soon.

But not too soon, as I’m about to hop on airplanes again: first for the World Science Festival, then for the Cheltenham Science Festival. (Cheltenham is actually part of the world, but the two festivals are quite different.) Note that at the WSF, our session on Quantum Physics and Reality (with Brian Greene, David Albert, Sheldon Goldstein, and Ruediger Schack, Thursday at 8pm Eastern) will be live-streamed. Maybe the Science and Story event (with Steven Pinker, Jo Marchant, Joyce Carol Oates, and E.L. Doctorow, Thursday at 5:30 Eastern) will be also, I don’t know.

So, in lieu of original content, here is seven minutes of me pronouncing sonorously on the meaning of life. This is from a debate I participated in with Michael Shermer, Dinesh D’Souza, and Ian Hutchinson (not the Greer-Heard Forum debate with William Lane Craig, as I originally thought). I talked about how naturalists find meaning in our finite lives, without any guidance from the outside world.

SEAN CARROLL - The Meaning of Life

I had nothing to do with the making of the video, and I have no idea where the visuals are from. It’s associated with The Inspiration Journey group on Facebook.

When I extend an kind of olive branch to believers, I do so in all sincerity. I unambiguously disagree with religious people on matters of fundamental ontology; but I recognize that we’re all just tiny little persons in a very big universe, trying our best to figure things out. And I’m firm in my conviction that we’re making progress.

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Help Wanted: Moving Naturalism Forward

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Update: This request received an amazing response! I had to make a tough choice, but I’ve picked someone to do the paid work of making a careful outline and suggesting possible excerpts. Thanks for everyone who sent a query.

Following ideas mentioned in the comments, however, there’s no reason why anyone cannot simply volunteer their own suggestions for parts of the videos that would make good excerpts. So, if anyone is so motivated, feel free to leave suggestions in the comments to this post. We might not be able to take all of them, but anything sensible will be considered. Thanks!

It’s been a year and a half since the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop, which featured a great line-up of thinkers: Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Terry Deacon, Simon DeDeo, Dan Dennett, Owen Flanagan, Rebecca Goldstein, Janna Levin, Massimo Pigliucci, David Poeppel, Alex Rosenberg, Don Ross, and Steven Weinberg. Fortunately we got the whole thing on video, so the conversations are preserved for posterity. Unfortunately, that amounts to ten videos, each about an hour and a half long. Not a quick watch for someone who just wants the highlights!

Moving Naturalism Forward: Day 1, Morning, 1st Session

So ever since the workshop, I’ve been wanting to go through the entire video record and make it more organized and digestible. That basically amounts to two things:

  1. Create a semi-detailed listing of who says what, when. So someone who wanted to hear Dan Dennett’s defense of free will could just skip right to that part of the relevant video — and could also see who mounted a challenge to it.
  2. Edit the long videos into much shorter highlights. Some very short bits of rhetorical brilliance, and/or some medium-length exchanges of separate interest.

I’ve been meaning to re-watch all the videos myself and do the above tasks, but it’s pretty clear that other obligations are in the way and it’s not going to happen. I have someone who will do the actual video editing, so really it’s about watching all the videos and making some intellectual/artistic decisions about what snippets might be good on their own.

So — anyone want to do it? This would be a paid gig, although it’s nothing you’d earn a living on, I promise you. I’m looking for a person with some kind of background both in science and philosophy, who can follow all the discussions and sensibly dissect them. Maybe about a week’s worth of work or a bit less, although it wouldn’t all have to be done within a week.

If you’re interested, shoot me an email (not a comment here), explaining a bit about what your background is. It’s not an enormous rush, although I’d like to get it done sooner rather than later. Could be fun!

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Peregrinations

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Running around these days, doing some linear combination of actual work and talking about things. (Sometimes the talking leads to actual work, so it’s not a total loss.) If you happen to be in a sciencey kind of mood when I’m in your vicinity, feel free to come to a talk and say hi!

  • Today, if you happen to be in Walla Walla, Washington, I’ll be giving the Brattain lecture at Whitman College, on the Higgs boson and the hunt therefor.
  • Next week I’ll be in Austin, TX. On Thursday April 17, I’ll be speaking in the Distinguished Lecture Series, once again on the marvels of the Higgs.
  • In May I’ll be headed to the Big Apple twice. The first time will be on May 7 for an Intelligence Squared Debate. The subject will be “Is There Life After Death?” I’ll be saying no, and Steven Novella will be along there with me; our opponents will be Eben Alexander and Raymond Moody.
  • Then back home for a bit, and then back to NYC again, for the World Science Festival. I’ll be participating in a few events there between May 29 and 31, although precise spatio-temporal locations have yet to be completely determined. One will be about “Science and Story,” one will be a screening of Particle Fever, and one will be a book event.
  • I won’t even have a chance to return home from NYC before jetting to the UK for the Cheltenham Science Festival. Once again, participating in a few different events, all on June 3/4: something on Science and Hollywood, something on the Higgs, and something on the arrow of time. Check local listings!
  • A chance I will be in Oxford right after Cheltenham, but nothing’s settled yet.
  • That’s it. Looking forward to a glorious summer full of real productivity.

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Decennial

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Almost forgot again — the leap-year thing always gets me. But I’ve now officially been blogging for ten years. Over 2,000 posts, generating over 57,000 comments. I don’t have accurate stats because I’ve moved around a bit, but on the order of ten million visits. Thanks for coming!

Nostalgia buffs are free to check out the archives (by category or month) via buttons on the sidebar, or see the greatest hits page. Here are some of my personal favorites from each of the past ten years:

Here’s to the next decade!

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William Lane Craig Debate

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Last week I participated in a dialogue with Princeton philosopher Hans Halvorson, sponsored by the Veritas Forum here at Caltech. We were talking about “physics and philosophy,” but the primary issue was theism and naturalism — Hans’s research specialty is philosophy of physics, especially quantum field theory, but he’s also a theist and often writes about science and religion. It was a fruitful discussion (I like to think), as we ended up agreeing about many points, even though we started from very different premises. He agreed with me, for example, that purported fine-tuning of cosmological parameters isn’t a very good argument in favor of the existence of an intelligent designer.

Next month I’ll be doing something related, although under quite different circumstances. On February 21 I’ll be debating William Lane Craig at the Greer-Heard Forum, an event sponsored by the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. It will actually be a two-day event; a debate between Craig and me on Friday night, and follow-ups on Saturday from other speakers — Tim Maudlin and Alex Rosenberg for Team Naturalism, Robin Collins and James Sinclair for Team Theism. Registration is open! I believe the whole thing will be streamed live online, and it will certainly be recorded for posterity. [Update: Here is the video.]

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William Lane Craig (or WLC as we call him in the business) is of course a very well-known figure, largely for his many public debates, on theism/atheism as well as on various other specific theological issues. As far as debating goes: he’s very good at it! If his debates were being judged by a panel of experts as in an intercollegiate debate tournament, he would have a very good record indeed. This has led many people to conclude that atheists just shouldn’t debate him at all, or at least not until they have devoted 10,000 hours to learning how to be a good debater.

Daniel Dennett warned me that, as soon as word got out that I would be debating WLC, I would be deluged with opinions and unsolicited advice. Which is great! Always happy to hear other perspectives, although I don’t promise to actually follow any of the advice. I won’t reproduce the various emails I’ve received, but here are a few very different perspectives online: Jerry Coyne, Luke Barnes (and another), and Wintery Knight. (WK is relatively restrained, but others predict “pummelings,” presumably for me.)

Just so we’re clear: my goal here is not to win the debate. It is to say things that are true and understandable, and establish a reasonable case for naturalism, especially focusing on issues related to cosmology. I will prepare, of course, but I’m not going to watch hours of previous debates, nor buy a small library of books so that I may anticipate all of WLC’s possible responses to my arguments. I have a day job, and frankly I’d rather spend my time thinking about quantum cosmology than about the cosmological argument for God’s existence. If this event were the Final Contest to Establish the One True Worldview, I might drop everything to focus on it. But it’s not; it’s an opportunity to make my point of view a little clearer to a group of people who don’t already agree with me.

The guy is a very polished public speaker, and he is certainly an expert in this format. But I have the overwhelming advantage of being right. If I thought WLC were right, I would just change my views. Since I don’t, my goal is to explain why not, as clearly as possible.

The general consensus in some corners seems to be that I will be crushed. I guess we shall see.

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Searching for the Science of Self

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memywhy_cover Book release day! Not by me — I’ve gone on quasi-hiatus from book-writing, and for that matter from blogging, while I am happily getting some actual science done. But the brilliant and talented Jennifer Ouellette has come out with her best book yet — Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self.

Jennifer’s last book was The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. The idea behind that one stemmed from her conviction that, despite having been an English major who did badly in math, it was important that she learn the basics of calculus in order to appreciate the way it alters how we experience the world. But in doing the research for that book, she discovered something surprising: according to her high-school transcripts, she hadn’t done badly in math at all. In fact she got all A’s. But she left school with a conviction that she was bad in math.

Where did that conviction come from? Was it society’s fault, man? Or did it come from her parents? And since she was adopted, which set of parents should be blamed? Clearly there was an science question here: what were the crucial influences that made her the person she eventually became?

Thus, the new book. Here Jennifer traces various scientific strands that weave together to make us the people that we are. Starting with some of the obvious strategies — genome sequencing, brain scans — and working up to some more (literally) brain-bending ideas about sexual identity, addiction, virtual reality, and the origins of consciousness.

Me, Myself and Why (book trailer)

Jennifer even convinced her innocent, straight-arrow husband to experiment briefly with hallucinogenic substances, in order to better understand how a temporary alteration in brain chemistry affects the self/other boundary. See Chapter Seven for the scandalous details.

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