Erotapokriseis IX
EN:
Hello, my dear readers, I’ve responded to most of your emails, but I thought I’d answer a few of your questions here as well. Thank you so much for reading and for your thoughtful feedback. It means a lot to me.
TR:
Merhaba sevgili okurlarım, Çoğunuzun e-postasına dönüş yaptım, ancak gelen bazı soruları burada da yanıtlamak istedim. Yazılarımı okuduğunuz ve değerli geri bildirimlerinizi paylaştığınız için çok teşekkür ederim. Hepsi benim için çok kıymetli.
1) Q: Bell’s Theorem forces you to give up one of three things: locality, realism, or free will. Which one do you let go of, and which one do you refuse to?
A: I refuse to give up free will; if something has to die, let it be the innocent little classical realism that thought the world was just sitting there with answers in its pockets. The world can be strange. I can live with strange. :) What I won’t give up is being the one who decides where to look.
This question came in Turkish.
2) Q: “En başarılı teori” dediğiniz Standard Model‘in 25 tane elle girilen parametresi var ve kimse neden tam o değerler olduğunu bilmiyor. İçinizi en çok kemiren hangisi?
A: Higgs kütlesi galiba; çünkü bütün evrenin neden böyle katılaştığını belirleyen sayı orada duruyor ve kimse bana “neden bu?” sorusunun cevabını veremiyor. Hiyerarşi problemi deyip geçiştiriyorlar. Tamam ama neden? :)
3) Q: A stranger at a party tells you quantum computers will break all encryption in five years (Quantum Computing). Before you say anything, what is your face doing?
A: Twitching. :)
P.S. I responded him the long version.
This question came in Turkish.
4) Q: Eski bir Erotapokriseis’te “Plato’yu nepotizm yazımda yerden yere vuracağım” demiştiniz. :) The Philosopher’s Nephew ile vurabildiniz mi, içiniz rahatladı mı?
A: Rahatlamadım, devamke :) Her fırsatta bir daha bir daha :D Bebeğim Aristo için içim hâlâ sızlıyor; o yüzden Platon benden biraz daha çekecek!
5) Q: The holographic principle suggests space itself might emerge from entanglement, that geometry isn’t fundamental. You work with entanglement every single day in error correction. Does that feel plausible to you, or too good to be true?
A: It feels plausible in the dangerous way beautiful ideas do: I do not trust beauty as evidence, but every day entanglement looks less like decoration and more like infrastructure. The honest answer is that I lean yes and distrust myself for leaning. If you haven’t read it, I recommend my own Beautiful But Wrong; this is exactly the kind of gorgeous idea that essay warns me about. Cheers!
This question came in Turkish.
6) Q: Bunca fizik yazısı yazdınız. Hangisini yazarken “vay be” deyip durakladınız, hangisi sizi en çok şaşırttı?
A: Ay, bunu cevaplamak çok zor. Fizik benim yumuşak karnım. Hepsi önemli, hepsi vay be. :D :D Ama silah zoruyla bir tane seçtirseniz: Bell teoremi. Evrenin yerel olmadığının kanıtlanmış olması içimi hâlâ bi şey ediyor. Ne bilmiyorum! :)
7) Q: Where do you place yourself between science and literature?
A: I don’t think I have to place myself between them. That framing assumes they sit on opposite ends of something, and I’ve never felt that. For me they are two faces of the same impulse: the wish to see the world clearly, without pretense.
Science answers “how.” The mechanism, the measurable. Literature answers what it is actually like, what living from the inside feels like. A scientific law can tell me the truth, but it cannot tell me what it was to lose my grandmother. Ivan Karamazov’s question doesn’t get solved in any equation. I carry both because neither is enough on its own. Physics gives me the structure of the world; literature gives me what it means to live inside that structure. And maybe the part I love most: both are looking at the same thing. Seeing why a cyclotomic structure breaks symmetry at exactly that point, and seeing why a Chekhov story aches at exactly that sentence, feel to me like the same kind of understanding. Noticing the pattern beneath the surface. It isn’t a coincidence that Zhivago is both a doctor and a poet. Those two are the same person’s attention, turned in different directions. So I don’t choose. Science tells me how the world works, literature tells me what it is like to be in it. Without one, the other would stay incomplete. That’s just how it is. :)
8) Q: What do you admit you have terrible taste in?
A: Ahahah, what a cute question. When I came to America I noticed something: everyone decorates everything so beautifully. I absolutely don’t get home decor. I’m hopeless at it. So when I bought my first place, I didn’t get any knick-knacks or decorations. Let’s just say it might be the most minimalist home in the world. As an excuse, I get to go “oh those just collect dust, I’m a minimalist.” It’s not like I don’t try when no one’s around, but no, it never works, nothing ever looks right. Even the walls are bare. :) That’s just how I am, what can I do.
9) Q: What is the most attractive intellectual quality?
A: Intellectual humility.
I find it very attractive when someone is intelligent enough to think deeply, but humble enough to know that intelligence does not make them superior. I like people who can say “I don’t know” without feeling diminished by it. For me, the most attractive intellectual quality is not having read the most books, knowing the most theories, or winning every argument. It is the ability to remain serious, curious, and honest in front of truth. I do not like performative intelligence. I do not like people who use knowledge to humiliate others, decorate their ego, or make every conversation a competition. That kind of intelligence feels vulgar to me.
What I admire is quieter: someone who thinks carefully, listens carefully, changes their mind when necessary, and does not need to turn every thought into a performance. A beautiful mind, for me, is not only sharp. It is also disciplined, generous, and humble.
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