This postdoc position is a two year scholarship supported by the Franklin Fetzer Fund. The research project-bound, ie the candidate will work on a particular topic under my supervision. The position comes with a modest travel budget.
Applicants should have a background in quantum foundations or quantum information, especially path integral formalism and decoherence theory. Applications should contain a CV, a list of publications, and at least 2 letters of recommendations. Documents should be sent by email to hossi@fias.uni-frankfurt.de with the subject “Postdoc 2018”.
The application deadline is December 7th, 2018.
The Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies is a non-profit research organization located on the North campus of the JW-Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. It is an international think-tank that collects researchers pursuing a large variety of topics ranging from physics to neuroscience to economics. The building is new, the people are friendly, and I am not remotely as terrible as they told you.
Further questions should be directed to hossi@fias-uni-frankfurt.de.
I wish, but Hons Chem 1972 won't do. Good luck
ReplyDeleteGodspeed. Bee. What Officially clever people would not allow you created for yourself by being better. Make physics great again.
ReplyDeleteVery good Sabine. I hope you pick the right person and s/he does a good job...
ReplyDeleteNote however that soon you vill verk on a particular topic under my supervision!
"The research project-bound, ie the candidate will work on a particular topic under my supervision."
ReplyDeletecan you say what this particular topic is?
Why don’t you ask Dr. Joy Christian? He’s an expert on quantum foundations. Maybe he can divide his time between Oxford and Frankfurt, and be a visiting researcher at FIAS.
ReplyDeleteWhen I hear scientists shout heresy, I immediately know they are not talking about science. There’s no heresy in science because there’s no dogma in science. Heresy and dogma apply only to religions, ideologies and cults. As for crazy ideas, are the Copenhagen and the Many-Worlds interpretations not crazy enough?
"Why don’t you ask Dr. Joy Christian? He’s an expert on quantum foundations. Maybe he can divide his time between Oxford and Frankfurt, and be a visiting researcher at FIAS."
ReplyDeleteThe last time I checked, "Oxford", in connection with Joy Christian, is not the University of Oxford. Brummie bass player Dave Pegg sometimes introduces songs beginning with "when I was at Birmingham University", later to reveal that he was playing a gig, or taking out the rubbish. :-)
I'm sure that Joy has enough to do running his own institute. :-|
I graduated one year earlier than Lindsay Forbes (above) - also in chemistry - so I am not going to apply (!!), but I would love you to write about your ideas about this subject, because it always seemed to me that QM is so profound that it seems a shame the frontier of physics has moved to other issues. Since I left science there have been a variety of experiments - such as the various entanglement experiments, and later variants. These all (I think) confirm QM - which is amazing precisely because the theory itself is so extraordinary. Since I don't like the idea of the Many Worlds proposal, I wonder if there is still any credence to the idea that the wave function is really collapsed by consciousness?
ReplyDeleteDavid, neo,
ReplyDeleteI will write about it eventually.
Wouldn't it be interesting to hire one of the "Infinitely Wise" Amazon's algorithms?
ReplyDeleteSabine,
ReplyDeleteWould you have applied to a
job offer that tells you:
"you will be required to work under my supervision on a topic
that I will disclose only later."?
Correct me if I am wrong: as far as I
can see you published a single paper
on quantum foundations 7 years ago
(in a journal and a conference version).
This paper did not deal with decoherence and/or
path integrals.
What is your qualification as "supervisor"
of an post-doc expert for such a project?
Rolf,
ReplyDeleteWhat is your qualification to judge me, my research, or my supervision skills? None of this is any of your business. Your comment - hidden behind a pseudonym - is ill-informed, disrespectful, and condescending. I sincerely hope you are not a professional scientist. If you have anything more to say, sign with your name.
@Philip
ReplyDelete“The last time I checked, "Oxford", in connection with Joy Christian, is not the University of Oxford.”
He was a Fellow at Oxford University. PhD in Physics from Boston University. Visiting Professor at Perimeter Institute. Recently published a paper in a journal of the Royal Society. You mean the Royal Society now publishes crackpot papers?
I’m sure you have better credentials than Dr. Crackpot
Just curious, may I know which particular topic is the project about? Thanks.
ReplyDelete"He was a Fellow at Oxford University. PhD in Physics from Boston University. Visiting Professor at Perimeter Institute. Recently published a paper in a journal of the Royal Society. You mean the Royal Society now publishes crackpot papers?"
ReplyDeleteStrange that it is you, not I, who mentions "crackpot" with respect to Christian.
But since you asked, I will point you to an answer to your question.
"I’m sure you have better credentials than Dr. Crackpot"
It is an old rule of logic that the competence of the speaker is independent of the truth of the statement. The biggest fool can say that the Sun will rise tomorrow, but that doesn't make it dark. (For what it's worth, all my publications are in the top journals of the field.)
@Philip
ReplyDeleteIt’s good you deny Dr. Christian is a crackpot so your comparison of him with a bass player is stupid. If you disagree with his paper, write directly to him and the Royal Society. Linking somebody else’s blog where your comment doesn’t even appear is singing We Are The Champions under a full moon.
I said you have better credentials than a crackpot and you disagree with me and imply you are the biggest fool who say the sun will rise tomorrow. That’s strange but I believe you.
"It’s good you deny Dr. Christian is a crackpot".
ReplyDeleteFirst you implied that I called him a crackpot when I hadn't, now you claim that I deny that he is a crackpot. Read what I write and don't put words in my mouth.
"so your comparison of him with a bass player is stupid"
I would never offend a bass player by comparing him to a crackpot. :-)
" If you disagree with his paper, write directly to him and the Royal Society."
Even just on the internet, one can find a huge amount of information rebutting his claims. It is clear that he doesn't understand the rebuttals or ignores them. So why should I waste my time writing to him?
As for the journal, the review process, which in this case is actually publicly available, is obviously lacking. There are many journals in the world which have low standards. Why do they survive? Because there are people who count papers or pages with no regard for quality. Because most of them are pay-to-publish journals (in the book trade, this is known as vanity publishing). Again, writing to them and complaining would be like writing to Donald Trump and telling him that human-caused global warming is not fake news. I have better things to do with my time.
Occasionally, bad papers get published in otherwise good journals. Sometimes the journal realizes that something went wrong. There have been a few prominent cases of retraction; the Bogdanov brothers spring to mind, but also a case involving Joy Christian and Annals of Physics (not to be confused with Annalen der Physik). Probably not coincidentally, Annals of Physics is published by Elsevier, which has had many, many problems of quality control in the last few years (on top of charging way too much for their journals).
It is perhaps mildly surprising that the Royal Society allows its reputation to suffer in this manner.
Look at his ResearchGate profile and give me an honest opinion as to whether his list of affiliations a) is correct or b) is intentionally worded to create the impression of something other than reality.
@Enrico
ReplyDeleteHello Enrico,
I do not wish to distract from the serious purpose of Sabine’s post, but please do not be upset by the ad hominem attack on me by Phillip Helbig. I am quite used to such attacks on me since 2007, after my first refutation of Bell’s theorem appeared on the arXiv. Unfortunately, some of the ad hominem attackers hold academic positions, which is rather shameful in my opinion. But I have learned the hard way that it is best to ignore such attacks, or related trolling.
However, I will defend my work on quantum correlations, because that is part of science.
Contrary to what is suggested by Phillip Helbig, no scientists with expertise and/or peer-reviewed publication record in geometric algebra has ever published a criticism of my work, even in an online comment on the Internet, let alone in a peer-reviewed journal publication. Unfortunately, those without expertise and/or peer-revised publication record in geometric algebra usually tend to misunderstand my arguments. In fact, some expertise or peer-reviewed publication record, not only in geometric algebra, but also in division algebras, differential geometry, topology, fiber bundles, and general relativity is essential for understanding my work on quantum correlations and Bell’s theorem. I do not apologize for that shortcoming on my part. :-)
As for my academic credentials and background, they are all spelled out on my blog and at our Centre’s website:
http://libertesphilosophica.info/blog/about/
http://einstein-physics.org/