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Just finished Jim Baggott's book, "Farewell to Realilty: How Modern Physics has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth." Anyone here read the book and care to respond?
Jim Baggott's book, "Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth," critiques the portrayal of modern physics in mass media, particularly highlighting the BBC's promotion of concepts like cosmic holograms and parallel worlds. Baggott argues that these ideas represent "fairy-tale" physics and aims to counteract the misleading narratives surrounding fundamental physics. The book has already sparked significant debate in the UK and is anticipated to do the same in the US upon its release.
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Jim Baggott has written a very good new book called Farewell to Reality that will soon come out here in the US. It is already out in the UK, where it is stirring up some debate, and perhaps the US will soon see something similar.
In the preface, Baggott explains that he was motivated to write the book by the experience of watching this BBC program, which featured a combination of serious science with revelations about how we’re all part of a cosmic hologram, there’s an infinity of parallel worlds, and various other examples of what he refers to as “fairy-tale” physics. In the last decade or so there have been a large number of such mass media efforts promoting highly dubious ideas about fundamental physics, and Baggott decided that in his next book he’d try and do something to counter this. I think he’s succeeded admirably: the BBC and other such organizations should atone for their sins by sending copies of the book to their viewers...