What does this movie tell us about the modern university?

Last night, my wife and I watched the movie, Wit.

You can watch the full movie here (free with ads). I should warn that some of the content is quite disturbing and confronting.

I asked Google Gemini the following question:

"the movie wit, starring emma thompson, features two professors, one of oncology and another of english literature. the latter has terminal cancer. in spite of their academic credentials, neither seems equipped to cope with the human side of the suffering of the patient. alisdair macintyre was a critic of the modern university. what might have he said about this movie?"

Here is the answer.

"Alasdair MacIntyre, a prominent critic of the modern university and contemporary moral culture, viewed modern institutions not as communities dedicated to a shared human good, but as bureaucratic structures driven by specialization, technical expertise, and managerial effectiveness.

Based on his philosophical framework—most notably developed in After Virtue—MacIntyre would likely view the dynamic in the movie Wit as a quintessential illustration of the moral and intellectual failures of the modern university. Here is what he might say about it:

1. The Triumph of Bureaucratic Expertise Over Human "Telos"

MacIntyre argued that modern academic disciplines have abandoned any coherent notion of a unified human telos (purpose or ultimate goal). Instead, they have fractured into compartmentalized technical specialties.

• The Oncologist: Represents the epitome of modern "technocratic" or "managerial" expertise. To the hospital and the university, medicine is treated as a problem-solving science rather than a moral practice aimed at human flourishing. The patient is reduced to a data point, a mechanical puzzle, or a vehicle for research.
  
  
• The English Literature Professor: Though her field deals with the humanities, the modern study of literature has similarly grown hyper-specialized, detached, and academicized (focused on obscure analysis, such as John Donne’s holy sonnets, rather than wisdom or existential truth).
  
  

2. The Failure of Emotivism and Detached Rationalism

MacIntyre famously claimed that modern moral discourse has devolved into emotivism—the idea that ethical judgments are merely expressions of personal preference or feeling rather than rational truths.

• Neither professor is equipped to handle human suffering because their education has stripped them of a shared moral language.
  
  
• The literature professor spent her life analyzing deep themes of mortality and grace on paper, but because modern academia treats texts as objects of clinical critique rather than guides for living, she remains entirely unprepared to face her own mortality with actual grace. Her knowledge was purely aesthetic and intellectual, leaving a void where real moral virtue should be.
  
  

3. The Loss of Genuine Community

For MacIntyre, universities were historically meant to be traditions-based communities focused on cultivating virtues.  He viewed the modern university as having traded this for bureaucratic careerism and bureaucratic compartmentalization.

• In Wit, the coldness of the hospital-university complex highlights a complete absence of genuine human community. Interactions are transactional and analytical.
  
  

In short, MacIntyre would likely argue that Wit demonstrates the tragic irony of the modern academy: it produces hyper-competent specialists who know an immense amount about narrow subjects, yet are entirely illiterate in the art of being human."

That is a beautiful reflection. My enjoyment of it is somewhat overshadowed by my awareness that AI produced it. It also raises all questions about how to use AI in ways that do not diminish my own humanity.

Statistical mechanics in just one equation

 This semester, I am giving four lectures in a third-year undergraduate course on statistical mechanics. Last year, I gave a guest lecture on the Ising model.

The first thing I want to emphasise is that the whole course is built around just one equation.

exp(−F(T, V)/kT) = ∑_s exp(−E_s/kT) ≡ Z(T, V)

This connects macroscopic thermodynamic properties (contained in the Helmholtz free energy F(T,V)) to microscopic properties (the energies E_s of all possible states s of the system).

[Note that from equilibrium thermodynamics, partial derivatives of F(T,V) give the entropy (and specific heat capacity) and the pressure (equation of state)].

I think that we are so used to this equation that we may miss just how amazing and profound it is.

First, the equation is incredibly simple.

Second, it is universal. It applies to any system in thermodynamic equilibrium regardless of its chemical or physical composition.

Third, in the context of the theory of emergent phenomena, it is exceptional because it provides a robust, tested way to connect the microscopic to the macroscopic. Biology, neuroscience, economics, sociology, and computer science have nothing like it.

Fourth, although the above three points are impressive, the basis of its validity remains an outstanding problem (a mystery?). One can "derive" it and "justify" it by drawing on assumptions such as the fundamental postulate ("in an isolated system all accessible microstates are equally probable"), the principle of maximum entropy, and the validity of equilibrium thermodynamics. But why are they true?

Although the equation is simple, implementing it, particularly for systems of interacting particles, is challenging. This challenge can be broken into five steps. One can get stuck on any one of the steps. People build whole careers on them.

1. For a system of interest, propose microscopic states of each particle and a Hamiltonian for the whole system.

2. Enumerate all possible microscopic states of the system.

3. Evaluate the energy of each of these microstates.

4. Perform the sum over all states in the partition function Z.

5. Take the thermodynamic limit where the system size becomes infinite.

Questions to consider when evaluating AI

 I am a slow adopter of new technologies. I have recently been playing around with AI at a very basic level on some research problems. Colleagues are also telling me about their experiences. I want to write something about its potential, both good and bad, for research and teaching. I want to hear from more people, particularly in condensed matter theory. However, before that, I think it is worth stepping back and asking some bigger questions than "Can AI help me publish more papers?" or "How do we stop students cheating on assessment?", as important as they are. I know the mathematics community is going through some angst and has issued a declaration about AI, and it is good to see that level of reflection.

Neil Postman (1931-2003) was a media theorist and cultural critic at New York University who spent a lifetime wrestling with questions about the broader implications of new technologies. In a talk given in 1998, he considered five things we need to know about technological change. Postman's enduring influence and relevance are marked by the fact that these five things featured in a column in The Washington Post, "Is the Internet Evil?" by Christine Emba, published in 2018.

Below, I summarise the five ideas from Postman's talk and provide questions (in italics) we should ask about any technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI).

1. All technological change is a trade-off. 

"the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences" 

Don't just ask the question "What will a new technology do?" Also ask, "What will a new technology undo?"

"a sophisticated perspective on technological change includes one’s being skeptical of Utopian and Messianic visions drawn by those who have no sense of history or of the precarious balances on which culture depends."

Through adoption of the technology, what will we lose, individually and as a society?

2. The advantages and disadvantages of a new technology are never distributed evenly among the population.

Who will benefit? Who will be harmed? 

Winners will try to persuade losers that they will benefit as well.

Benefits and harms can relate to employment, finances, social status, health, and political power.

3.  Embedded in every technology are powerful ideas. 

"These ideas are often hidden from our view because they are of a somewhat abstract nature. But this should not be taken to mean that they do not have practical consequences."

"The telegraphic person values speed, not introspection. The television person values immediacy, not history... the computer person values information, not knowledge, certainly not wisdom." 

"The medium is the message."

What ideas are embedded in the technology?

How does it make us use our minds and bodies?

How does it affect our personal relationships and social cohesion?

4. Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. It changes everything.

"The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible."

The entrepreneurs who started the television industry "did not mean to turn political discourse into a form of entertainment."

The consequences can be social, economic, political, environmental, religious, and health-related.

What are the unintended consequences of the technology?

5. When a technology becomes mythic, it is always dangerous because it is then accepted as it is, and is therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control.

"...our enthusiasm for technology can turn into a form of idolatry and our belief in its beneficence can be a false absolute. The best way to view technology is as a strange intruder, to remember that technology is not part of God’s plan but a product of human creativity and hubris, and that its capacity for good or evil rests entirely on human awareness of what it does for us and to us."

How does the technology lead to idolatry? Do some people worship it, its creators, or its owners?

Finally,

Do we use the technology or does the technology use us? 

In different words, will we shape our lives to fit the requirements of the technology, rather than have our values shape our use of the technology?

What is the integer quantum Hall effect?

And why is it so amazing?

Surprises [about physics in two dimensions] occurred in the 1980s when it became possible to study Landau levels [the quantised energy levels of electrons in a magnetic field] in Flatland. This happens when the electrons are completely constrained to move in only two dimensions. The surface within which the electrons move needs to be extremely flat and free from defects and impurities. Advances in semiconductor technology in the 1970s led to two realisations of this Flatland. Both were developed for technological reasons: the desire to have transistors in which the electrons and holes can move extremely fast. One class of device is silicon MOSFETs (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors). The second class is heterostructures, where layers of ultrapure semiconductors such as gallium arsenide are grown on top of each other, one layer of atoms at a time. In both classes of device, a fixed density of electrons (or holes) can be injected at the surface. These charge carriers can move freely in Flatland, acting like a fluid. Things get interesting when the number of charge carriers is small enough and the magnetic field is large enough that the number of charge carriers is comparable to the number of quanta of magnetic flux that pass through the system. Then, the quantum state of most of the charge carriers is one of the lowest Landau energy levels. 

To achieve this regime for the cleanest possible systems requires magnetic fields more than a hundred thousand times stronger than that of the Earth. Furthermore, the magnetic field must be spatially uniform in the region where the semiconductor system is located, stable over the time of the measurements, and the interior of the electromagnet producing the field must be large enough to contain a refrigerator that can cool the charge carriers in the system down to a few degrees above absolute zero. By 1980, all these conditions became possible. Klaus von Klitzing was able to perform measurements of the Hall resistance versus magnetic field in a special high magnetic field laboratory in Grenoble, France. The results were surprising and are shown schematically in Figure 35 below. There are four noteworthy features. 

 

Figure 35. The quantum Hall effect. The Hall resistance is shown as a function of the strength of the magnetic field and has a step-like structure. The integer n is related to the quantized energy that the charge carriers have.

First, there are distinct steps in the curve. At small magnetic fields the Hall resistance versus field is a straight line, as expected for the classical Hall effect. However, at larger fields there are plateaus in the curve.

Second, each of the plateaus is extremely flat. Von Klitzing found that the magnitude of the Hall voltage on each plateau did not vary to one part in ten million. As he varied the magnetic field, he noticed that the first seven digits on the voltmeter he was using did not change. He wondered if the voltmeter was broken and had become jammed. But it was working.

Third, the magnitude of the Hall resistance for all the plateaus has a simple relationship to fundamental physical constants. The quantum of resistance is defined as equal to h/2e^2 . When you calculate this quantity, the answer (25,812.827 ohms) is in the units of electrical resistance. The value of the Hall resistance is precisely equal to this value divided by an integer (n=1,2,3 …) which is related to the highest quantized energy (Landau level) that an electron can have at that magnetic field. That is why it is known as the integer quantum Hall effect.

Fourth, the observed value of the Hall resistance for each of the plateaus is independent of many details, including the temperature, the amount of disorder in the material, the chemical composition of system (silicon versus gallium arsenide), or whether the charge carriers are electrons or holes. [This independence is characteristic of the universality associated with emergent phenomena]. 

These four features are similar to those for the steps associated with the macroscopic quantum effects (magnetic flux in superconducting cylinders, circulation in a superfluid, Josephson effects) discussed in the previous chapter. Again, it is astonishing that a macroscopic measurement – of electrical resistance - of a macroscopic system can determine fundamental constants that are normally associated with properties of atomic systems. Just as the Josephson effect led to a new standard measure for voltage, the quantum Hall effect led to a new standard measure for electrical resistance.

Anyone familiar with building electronic circuits will have used resistors of varying values in ohms (Ω), e.g., 10 Ω or 25 kΩ. When these resistors are made, they are calibrated against some standard. For making integrated circuits with billions of transistors this standard needs to be extremely accurate. In 1990 the international standard for the ohm was changed to be that defined by the quantum Hall effect. Previously, the ohm was defined by the electrical resistance of a column of liquid mercury with constant cross-sectional area, 106.3 cm long, a mass of 14.4521 grams and a temperature 0 °C. Like the Josephson voltage standard, the quantum Hall resistance standard has the advantage of precision, portability, reliability, reproducibility, and independence of platform. 

An extract from Topology Matters, Chapter 8, Condensed Matter Physics: A Very Short Introduction.

The emergence of hadronic matter from interacting quarks and gluons

 A characteristic of emergent phenomena is how novel and complex properties can emerge from apparently simple laws. Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD) describes the interaction of quarks and gluons. The classical Lagrangian is remarkably simple.

It has an SU(3) local gauge symmetry and the A_v^mu are the associated gauge fields (gluons).

The quarks are fermions with fractional electrical charge. The only parameters in the theory are the coupling constant g_s, which describes the self-interaction of the gluons, and the bare masses of the quarks, m_f. The gluons are massless. In the limit where the bare mass of quarks vanishes, the Lagrangian has chiral symmetry, which transforms quarks with left-handed symmetry into right-handed.

Frank Wilczek states that QCD "is conceptually simple. Its realisation in nature, however, is usually very complex. But not always."

Hadronic matter (nucleons and mesons) has properties that are qualitatively different from its components (interacting quarks and gluons). In other words, it is emergent. In hadronic matter, there are no particles with fractional electrical charge or massless bosons. Chiral symmetry is broken. Consequently, hadrons do not come in pairs with opposite parity and equal energy. Quarks are confined and this is associated with a string tension. The order parameter associated with confinement is the Polyakov (or Wilson) loop. The connection between chiral symmetry breaking and confinement is subtle. For a long time they were thought to be intimately connected but now that is not the case.

Although the underlying Lagrangian is simple, the spectrum of hadrons and their interactions is complex. There is a "zoo" of particles. This all comes from a single coupling constant!

On the one hand, this complexity is surprising. On the other hand, it is similar to how there is a simple coupling constant (the electronic charge) in the Hamiltonian that describes most of chemistry and condensed matter physics. Most of the particles are unstable and can be viewed as quasiparticles as they have a finite lifetime, even in the absence of electroweak interactions. 

The emergent state of hadronic matter only exists at "low" temperatures and densities. It "melts" at the high temperatures associated with the Big Bang, relativistic heavy ion colliders, or the high densities associated with neutron stars. But that and the associated phase diagram of QCD is another story...

Update. I revised this post due to some helpful clarifications from Chris Allton, who was visiting UQ this week.