Richard A. Muller (2) (1944–)

Imperfect and sometimes irritating, now bit out of date but an important book to understand energy policies in the US. The author does a good job to focus the key decisions ahead and their complexity. The opportunities and costs of different technologies and what to expect from them going ahead.

The incredible aspect of this is how unlikely any future president might read and actually understand the claculations here.

I would love to read a critique of this text by another as brilliant physicist.… (meer)

Provocative. Almost wish I had taken notes so I could remember all his arguments. Seemed like a balanced approach to the issues, but I'd like to see some responses from people like Al Gore. Also, he strayed from science, I felt, when he used words like "propaganda" to describe how Gore presented climate-related information in "An Inconvenient Truth." I can buy that maybe Gore did not use good judgment in the inclusion and presentation of the information, but to suggest that there was political motivation behind it requires more evidence.… (meer)

It’s ridiculous to attempt to lay out the conceptualization of time throughout recorded thought, to present a primer on the physics (including but not limited to quantum theory and a large part of Einstein’s career) behind theories of time, and to give an account of the ways one’s thoughts on time evolve throughout a career in physics and relate to personal achievements. But this is what Muller attempts, and though it’s an admirable project, it rather predictably fails in thoroughness.
His thinking style is engaging, but his writing does not keep up with his rapid-fire jumps from topic to topic. His summaries of complex quantum theory for pedestrian non-physicist rubes like myself are obviously well-intentioned, but didn’t quite do the trick for me; all the same I appreciated the intention to explain rather than dismiss material as too complex for the common audience. I’d agree with other reviewers that his actual addressing of the topic of “Now,” postponed until the last 6 pages of the book, was inadequate.
The most significant part of the book, the idea on which he built his ideas of experiencing “now,” was the work he had done at Berkeley. He observed precisely identical particles behaving differently, and deduced that because statistical and quantum physics cannot predict different behaviors for identical particles, they cannot predict the full future, and free will is therefore possible. His history of the philosophical and scientific analyses of time were interesting, and could have been expanded into an interesting book in their own right. This also would’ve provided a more solid foundation for the last two chapters, which explain his personal views on free will, which seemed a bit out of place after several hundred pages on specific physics theories.… (meer)