

A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos - digital55
http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-wunderkind-who-calms-chaos/

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ealloc
He is doing an investigation into the underlying foundations of statistical
mechanics.

Statistical Mechanics and thermodynamics are the basis for a huge amount of
technology and scientific models of the world, yet they rely on a fundamental
assumption which is in some sense unjustified, known as the 'Ergodic
hypothesis': Even though (classically) we know that the current position of
gas particles in a box can be determined from their positions in the past, in
thermodynamics we make the (unjustified) assumption that their positions are
actually random and independent of their previous positions. In other words,
these models for the world are probabilistic, which contradicts our more
fundamental models of the world which say it is deterministic (and even QM is
deterministic, with the single exception of the born rule). What he's doing
here helps justify the probabilistic treatment, and understand when it does or
does not apply.

I have always though this to be one of the great 'foundations' questions in
physics (The others being QM foundations/origin of the born rule, and
foundations of Field Theory). These are 'hard' and borderline philosophical
questions, which most scientists (with good reason) simply assume to be true,
to the point they often find them uninteresting. Lately though there seems to
be renewed interest in them.

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murbard2
I've always found E.T. Jayne's treatment of the topic to be good. Randomness
is in the mind of the experimenter, it does not represent an intrinsic
characteristic of the system but the ignorance of the experimenter. This is,
in my mind, the most satisfactory answer to Gibbs paradox.

Born rule on the other hand, I can't wrap my mind around. Absent wave function
collapse (for which there is zero evidence), what exactly are Borne
probabilities probability off :(

~~~
jjoonathan
_ahem_

Do you have a moment to speak about accepting Many Worlds Theory as your
savior?

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murbard2
I do accept Many Worlds, that's why Borne probabilities make no sense :-/

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temuze
This is Brazil's first Fields Medal - no Brazilian citizen has won a Nobel
prize either. Obviously, this is a big deal for our country.

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ft88
No it's not, most of his work was developed in France because here in Brazil
we don't give anything about science.

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sanoli
A lot of his work was developed at IMPA (Brazils Institute for Pure and
Applied Mathematics), which has historically been somewhat connected to french
mathematics universities. But, yeah, our best minds still go abroad to become
fully developed. The big problem in Brazil is that our basic education is
crap. We do have good higher institutions, but a lot of the people who end up
there never had a good base.

~~~
ft88
>our best minds still go abroad to become fully developed and this is what
made me angry, our best researchers needs to leave the country to work because
here they don't have a proper support, and when they finally succeed in
something the people remember that he is brazilian like it was a determinant
factor.

~~~
soneca
sorry, but IMPA indeed was a determinant factor in his prize. Much more than
the french institution.

You would be right for any other world class brazilian scientist. BUt IMPA is
one institution that can support a world class scientist here in Brazil.

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danielrpa
Brazilian here: between the fields medal and the world cup, I'll take the
medal every time.

~~~
SubuSS
How is the media reacting in Brazil? If only they showcased him alongside the
famous footballers...

I come from India which is fanatic about Cricket. You would think media will
understand the need to give India's chess grandmasters the same exposure as
cricketers, but in reality it is mostly run as a business :(

~~~
P4u1
Unfortunately little to no reaction at all, and I don't think there will be
more coverage, specially after a plane crashed today carrying a presidential
candidate.

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andlima
Actually, I think the coverage was decent until now (at least on the web),
but, yeah, the death of Eduardo Campos will definitely eclipse the award.

~~~
soneca
I agree. He was in every news TV show, including the biggest of them "Jornal
Nacional". Also very good coverage of IMPA, the math institute behind his
education.

But sure, now with the sad news about Eduardo Campos he will be nowhere to be
seen. I hope in the next months and years he is remembered and popularized (is
that a word?).

~~~
icambron
> is that a word?

yes

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personlurking
Congrats to him! It was also just announced that in 2018 the International
Congress of Mathematicians will occur in Rio de Janeiro (being called the
"Math World Cup" in Portuguese).

From the video interview, I understand he has been living in Paris for a while
but his English accent is surprisingly non-Brazilian (sounds Russian with his
Rs and closed vowels).

