u/Unlikely-Eggplant232

Example 1: I was reading about the 2009 Gojra massacre, where a pogrom of Christians took place just because there were rumors of a Quran being desecrated. Imagine murdering innocent people just because a book, written by ignorant people in the 7th century Arabia, was rumored to be desecrated.

Example 2: I recently attended my cousin's wedding, and at the end, my maternal uncle was holding a Quran over her head while everyone was leaving. As the only sane and rational person in the entire wedding hall, I was just staring in disbelief at this level of religious stupidity.

Example 3: When I was in my A-levels, I took further mathematics, and I had a really good teacher. In a lecture on classical mechanics, he started talking about verses in the Quran and related them to black holes. That was extremely bizarre and cringy.

This level of religious lunacy is completely inherent to this country, across all walks of life and socio-economic conditions. Hundreds of millions sincerely believe that the Quran is the word of God, and would support killing anybody who even raises the idea of this book being entirely the product of human minds. Eradicating this medieval religious stupidity in Pakistan is as likely as Muhammad flying on a winged horse. There is nothing to do but leave.

Understandably, many native British citizens feel aggrieved by rapid demographic shifts that they never explicitly endorsed. Nevertheless, directing frustration toward immigrants is fundamentally unjust. These societal changes were not the result of a deliberate conspiracy but rather stemmed from severe political miscalculation. When Parliament passed the British Nationality Act of 1948, lawmakers failed to anticipate the scale of Commonwealth immigration that would follow.

A remarkably similar situation unfolded in the United States with the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. At that time, the American population was overwhelmingly white, and political leaders made explicit promises that the legislation would not alter the existing ethnic balance of the country. Those political assumptions proved entirely incorrect, leading to profound demographic transformations that are actively reshaping the national majority.

The frustrations of native citizens are entirely valid because they never voted to undergo such drastic shifts or to see their local communities become unrecognizable within a single lifetime. Simultaneously, it remains deeply unethical to harbor resentment or act aggressively toward immigrants. These individuals simply utilized legal avenues to secure better futures for their families. Ultimately, the burden of responsibility rests squarely with the political class. Lawmakers enacted policies with massive unforeseen consequences, and once the demographic realities became undeniable, they pivoted to dishonest rhetoric. Rather than admitting their historical misjudgments, politicians began insisting that diversity was an absolute strength and demanded that the native population simply accept the new reality in silence.

I am trying to understand a point that seems easy to state but hard to make precise.

In many discussions of emergent spacetime, locality is not assumed to be fundamental. Geometry is supposed to arise from something more primitive, such as entanglement structure, tensor networks, holography, causal structure, or an algebraic description.

My confusion is about the order of explanation.

If the underlying description does not already contain a background notion of nearby and far apart, what selects the particular subalgebras or degrees of freedom that later behave as local regions of spacetime?

Is there a known physical criterion that plays this role, such as factorization, error correction, modular structure, causality, symmetry, energy conditions, or some stability requirement?

I am not proposing a model. I am looking for the cleanest way this question is formulated in current theory, and for pointers to papers or frameworks where this selection problem is treated seriously.

Quran 2:221: "Do not marry polytheistic women until they believe; for a believing slave-woman is better than a free polytheist, even though she may look pleasant to you. And do not marry your women to polytheistic men until they believe, for a believing slave-man is better than a free polytheist, even though he may look pleasant to you. They invite ˹you˺ to the Fire while Allah invites ˹you˺ to Paradise and forgiveness by His grace. He makes His revelations clear to the people, so perhaps they will be mindful."

I am an ex-Muslim atheist, and I am interested in how Coptic Christians view abortion and gay marriage.

People say gravitational waves carry energy, which makes sense from things like binary pulsars and black hole mergers. The system loses orbital energy, and that energy goes into gravitational radiation.

But I’ve also seen people say there is no local, coordinate-independent energy density for the gravitational field in GR. Unlike electromagnetism, where you can write down an energy density for the field, gravity apparently doesn’t have a nice local stress energy tensor of its own.

So how should I think about the energy carried by a gravitational wave?

My current guess is that in the full theory, the energy is not represented by an extra local tensor for gravity. It is somehow tied up in the nonlinear geometry itself. Then, when you do perturbation theory and write something like

g_μν = η_μν + h_μν

you can treat some of the higher-order terms as an effective stress energy for the wave, at least approximately.

Is that the right way to think about it, or am I mixing things up?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been reading up on the "It from Qubit" paradigm and the idea that spacetime geometry is fundamentally emergent from quantum entanglement, specifically looking at Mark Van Raamsdonk's work, Ryu Takayanagi, and the general ER=EPR conjecture.

I understand the basic premise: the connectivity and geometry of bulk spacetime correspond to the entanglement entropy of the boundary CFT. However, I’m struggling with a conceptual hurdle regarding the background independence of this setup, and I'd love to hear how the community views this.

If we say that space is built out of entanglement, we first have to define entanglement. In standard quantum mechanics, entanglement is defined relative to a specific factorization of the Hilbert space into subsystems: ℋ = ℋ_A ⊗ ℋ_B.

Usually, this factorization is inherently spatial, like having Alice's lab here and Bob's lab there.

My questions are:

1. If space does not fundamentally exist yet, what dictates the "correct" tensor product factorization of the underlying universal Hilbert space?
2. Are we forced to assume a preexisting algebraic structure that secretly smuggles a notion of locality back into the theory before spacetime even emerges?
3. In a fully background independent quantum gravity framework, how does the theory "know" which degrees of freedom to entangle to build the geometry we experience?

I feel like saying "spacetime comes from entanglement" is slightly circular if entanglement inherently relies on spatial separation to be meaningfully defined.

Am I misunderstanding how the Hilbert space is factored in these models? I would appreciate any insights, corrections to my premise, or recommendations for papers that directly address the ontological status of the Hilbert space in emergent gravity!

My ancestors were Hindu and they converted to Islam many centuries ago. Since I have left Islam, would I be considered a Hindu, or do I actually need to believe in the specific religious claims?

I am an ex-Muslim atheist from Pakistan, and I was thinking a bit about our history. Our ancestors left Hinduism and converted to Islam some centuries ago between 1200-1800 CE. By leaving Hinduism, they got rid of the caste system and now that we have left Islam, we got rid of religious superstition and dogmatism entirely. It would be quite nice if we could have a state of our own. This way we won't be killed by Muslims for being apostates, and won't be persecuted by Hindutva goons who will assume that we are Muslims based on our Arabic/Persian names. Furthermore, the Arabic/Persian names are a very important part of our identity since if we wanted to get Sanskrit names, we can't easily do that because of the caste system.

I know you don't consider me British. Your ethnic nationalism makes that clear. But let's park that for a moment. What is your actual endgame? Are you pushing for the kind of full-scale 'remigration' championed by European Identitarians like Martin Sellner and Renaud Camus? If your conscience won't stomach that, what is your alternative?

I am an ex-Muslim atheist, and I am well aware of the persecution and violence towards Christians in Egypt. This hatred of Christians and disbelievers isn't an accident and comes directly from the Quran:

1. Quran 98:6: "Indeed, those who disbelieve from the People of the Book and the polytheists will be in the Fire of Hell, to stay there forever. They are the worst of ˹all˺ beings."
2. Quran 5:51: "O believers! Take neither Jews nor Christians as guardians—they are guardians of each other. Whoever does so will be counted as one of them. Surely Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people."
3. Quran 9:29: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, nor comply with what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth from among those who were given the Scripture, until they pay the tax, willingly submitting, fully humbled."
4. Quran 5:72: "Those who say, 'Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary,' have certainly fallen into disbelief. The Messiah ˹himself˺ said, “O Children of Israel! Worship Allah—my Lord and your Lord.” Whoever associates others with Allah ˹in worship˺ will surely be forbidden Paradise by Allah. Their home will be the Fire. And the wrongdoers will have no helpers."

There are many other verses like this in the Quran that Islamic preachers and Muslim mobs regularly invoke in Egypt to spread hatred of Christians. As an apostate, I am to be killed under Islam, and I express my full solidarity with the Christians of Egypt.

Generation after generation of Muslims have brainwashed their children into believing that a book written down in 7th-century Arabia is the word of God and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. This is egregious child abuse that has been going on for the last 1,400 years. We have an entire civilization of dangerously confused religious imbeciles that is teaching its next generation to believe claims that shouldn't survive an elementary school education. Yet here we are, with these unreasonable and unjustifiable supernatural claims causing immense human suffering. The Quran says to hate the infidel, and Muslims hate the infidel because the Quran spells it out ad nauseam.

If you look at their immigration and deportation policy, it's the closest to PVV of the Netherlands and AfD of Germany. But the interesting difference is that Reform isn't considered a far-right party, unlike AfD or PVV, because its rhetoric isn't as extreme. Reform isn't talking about ethnic nationalism like the AfD or saying that Islam doesn't belong in the UK like the PVV. They are talking about illegal immigration, crime, sovereignty, and low-skilled immigration. I think this is a very smart strategy, because the average Brit would find the extreme rhetoric of European far-right parties unappealing, even though they might fully agree with their immigration policies.

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking a lot about national identity and how it changes depending on where you are in the world. In some countries, identity is heavily tied to where your ancestors are from, but I understand that in Germany, identity is viewed very differently.

I'm curious to hear from locals: What makes someone "German" in your eyes today?

• Is it almost entirely about mastering the language?
• Is it about shared cultural values, the mindset, or a specific way of life?
• If someone moves to Germany, learns the language fluently, and integrates completely, do you eventually consider them German, or just an expat who fits in well?

I’m really interested in your personal perspectives and what everyday things define the German identity for you. Thanks!

I am an ex-muslim atheist from Pakistan, and I wanted to ask you guys what it means to be a Hindu. Is it a civilizational identity or a religious identity, and if it's a religious identity, then what beliefs are necessary to be considered a Hindu?

I am from Pakistan, which explicitly has the death penalty for blasphemy. If I were to publicly confess that I am an apostate or criticize Islam, I would be murdered by the society around me or given life imprisonment. I will answer any question you guys ask me.

Hey everyone. I just tested the ChatGPT 5.5 extended thinking mode on the recent Putnam 2025 math competition and it got a completely perfect score. I am absolutely blown away by this result, but I want to keep my expectations realistic. Does anyone know if the 2025 Putnam questions were already included in the training data for this model? If it actually solved these problems completely from scratch, then its mathematical reasoning abilities are truly unbelievable. Has anyone else tested the model on other highly recent and complex math exams? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

I am not a religious person, or Lebanese. But I have been reading about Lebanon's history and politics for some time. This whole system of sectarianism is completely unsustainable. In the Lebanese civil war, people were slaughtering each other based on what their religious identity was. If there is so much mistrust and in-group out-group thinking where religious identity is the most important variable in society, why not just partition Lebanon and have an exchange of populations.

Jami` at-Tirmidhi 1663: That the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: "There are six things with Allah for the martyr. He is forgiven with the first flow of blood (he suffers), he is shown his place in Paradise, he is protected from punishment in the grave, secured from the greatest terror, the crown of dignity is placed upon his head - and its gems are better than the world and what is in it - he is married to seventy two wives along Al-Huril-'Ayn of Paradise, and he may intercede for seventy of his close relatives."

[Abu 'Eisa said:] This Hadith is Hasan Sahih.

As an ex-Muslim atheist living in London, I have a profound appreciation for Britain. I truly believe it is one of the most tolerant countries in the world, and I love it to my core. However, I am growing deeply anxious about the current trajectory of our society. I sincerely believe that Islamism and religious extremism pose an existential threat to the UK and the secular, progressive values we cherish.

The polling data is difficult to ignore. A recent survey by the Henry Jackson Society found that 32% of British Muslims support the implementation of Sharia Law, with a similar percentage wanting Islam recognized as the state religion. Furthermore, 52% support the introduction of Islamic blasphemy laws, including the criminalization of depicting Muhammad. This echoes previous findings, such as a Channel 4 poll indicating that 78% wanted the Danish cartoonists prosecuted. While these figures are horrific to read, they are unfortunately unsurprising to me, given that the traditional theological punishment for blasphemy in Islam is death.

We have to be able to talk about this honestly. If mainstream, progressive movements shy away from addressing the realities of religious extremism and the challenges of integration, we will simply hand a monopoly on this issue over to fascists and bad-faith bigots.

If Labour genuinely wants to neuter the threat of the far right and populist factions like Reform UK, we cannot leave these uncomfortable conversations to them. I believe the party must look toward the Danish Social Democrats, adopting a similarly robust and realistic approach to immigration, integration, and the defense of secular democracy.