Martin Rees On The Multiverse, Scientific Research & Reality

There's an interesting piece by Martin Rees about the nature of the Uni/Multiverse, as well as some of the underlying mechanics. Also, a good bit on the nature of scientific research. You can get the text or the Real version. Good stuff.

Comments

Don't encourage idiots...

[I'm a racist.]

This stuff is rather speculative. And, to really understand it, valid or not, takes quite a few years of background. Invariably, when you get the general public reading things like this, it gets them started spouting all kinds of ridiculous shit. They automatically oversimplify, and pretend to actually comprehend it (despite not even knowing what a differential equation is).

I'm all for getting people interested in science. But, is there some way to do that without only getting them to absorb a fraction of the information, and then going on to propogate gross misinformation?

I hate to say that such things shouldn't be written, but they may actually do more harm than good. Afterall, everyone who's read one of Hawking's books thinks they could carry on a conversation with a high level theorist (in topics such as cosmology, quantum mechanics, etc), which is absolutely not the case.

I'll bet that over 50% of the comments for this article will be pseudo-intellectuals espousing their retarded theories, misinformation, and other general stupidity... as opposed to the typical 30-40% of idiocy most /. articles draw.