Freeman Dyson: Rebel without a PhD

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You became a professor at Cornell without ever having received a Ph.D. You seem almost proud of that fact.

Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all.

From a lovely interview with Dyson on his 90th birthday.

The real threat from Trump

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Summarised neatly by David Frum in his new book:

“The thing to fear from the Trump presidency is not the bold overthrow of the Constitution, but the stealthy paralysis of governance; not the open defiance of law, but an accumulating subversion of norms; not the deployment of state power to intimidate dissidents, but the incitement of private violence to radicalize supporters.”

The twisted fence

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Blakeney Marsh, this afternoon. We parked on the staithe and walked out on the dyke towards the sea in a pretty brisk wind. On the way out I passed this fence, distorted by a recent storm (which had also thrown a yacht and a few other boats onto the marsh) but didn’t stop. On the way back, though, I was struck by the strange symmetry between the tortured curves of the fence and the twisting creeks through which the tide flows when coming in to Blakeney harbour — so stopped to try and capture it.

Click on the image to get the larger size.

Bitcoin’s silver lining?

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This morning’s Observer column:

The downside of the media feeding frenzy around bitcoin is the way it obscures the fact that the technology underpinning it, the blockchain, or the public distributed ledger – a database securely recording financial, physical or electronic assets for sharing across a network through transparent updates of information – is potentially very important. This is because it may have more useful applications than supporting speculative bubbles or money laundering. In 2016, for example, Mark Walport, the government’s chief scientific adviser issued a report, arguing that the technology “could transform the delivery of public services and boost productivity”.

Which indeed it could, but that would be small beer if the messages I’m picking up from across the tech world are accurate. For the real significance of blockchain technology might be its capacity to retool the internet itself to make it secure enough for modern use and return it to its decentralised essence, in the process possibly liberating it from the tech companies that currently have a stranglehold on it…

Read on

Countering the wisdom of hindsight

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We went to see Darkest Hour last night. Spellbinding performance by Gary Oldman as Churchill. The only parallel I can think of is Bruno Ganz’s evocation of Hitler in Downfall. There are a couple of dramatic-licence slips which are understandable in terms of the script dynamics but overall it’s a fascinating and occasionally moving film. Its most redeeming features are (i) countering the complacency of hindsight by conjuring up the desperation of the British plight after the invasion of France (and before US aid kicked in); and (ii) its revisionist interpretation of the peacemongering activities of Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain in the early days of the War Cabinet.

Well worth seeing IMHO.

ps: Makes me realise that I need to read Nicholas Shakespeare’s Six Days in May. No rest for the wicked.