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Physics Articles For Hackenslash

arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
Dude, I've been so buried in virology and immunology, just making sure I can track the facts at least a few steps beyond my assertions, which I've found is the best way to stop short of the worst howlers.

That Hawking result is lovely, and might have won the Nobel on a quiet year.

I'll catch up when I have a mo.
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
OK, so that was a pretty understated intro now I've read the piece.

This is mind-blowing. What if I were to tell you that quantum mechanics and general relativity are the same theory?

Interested yet?
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
Most of the time Wolfram found that nothing interesting happened. In some cases, however, there were persistent features that moved across the evolving cellular grid, reminiscent of subatomic particles in the real world. But the big surprise was that there were a few rules that created never-ending novelty and complexity.

It's always funny when you have the advantage of hindsight to wonder why something ever appeared complicated before.
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
Indeed. Huxley's famous exclamation the most obvious example.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
I find myself in general appreciation for where his mind is going, but I also think it still has the same problems of 20 years ago in that it is rather more allegorical than empirical - but then this is just an article by some dude about it, and I am sure Wolfram's imagining is hyper-mathematical, which is an empiricism of its own.
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
I find myself in general appreciation for where his mind is going, but I also think it still has the same problems of 20 years ago in that it is rather more allegorical than empirical - but then this is just an article by some dude about it, and I am sure Wolfram's imagining is hyper-mathematical, which is an empiricism of its own.
True, although I don't know that I'd necessarily describe Marcus Chown as 'some dude'. lol

There is something about a mathematical or computational approach. To the hard empiricists, I'm sure it looks not much better than numerology, but Dirac settled that one for me, given that a purely mathematical approach rooted in elegance and beauty gave us anti-matter and the first successful union of quantum theory and relativity.

There is a danger, though, stemming from the sort of thinking that @surreptitious75 and I had in the comments section of my blog about some comments made by Max Tegmark. It's not an enormous step from this to that. Tegmark is a great physicist. but he should separate his ontological musings from his physics when discussing in front of a lay audience, IMO, because he always ends up turning hard physics into woo worthy of Deepity Chakra.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
True, although I don't know that I'd necessarily describe Marcus Chown as 'some dude'. lol

:D


There is something about a mathematical or computational approach. To the hard empiricists, I'm sure it looks not much better than numerology, but Dirac settled that one for me, given that a purely mathematical approach rooted in elegance and beauty gave us anti-matter and the first successful union of quantum theory and relativity.

Math is so good at producing outcomes, always looking for a solution, a product, a symmetry to the equation... and that outcome is also a prediction of how things work, and simultaneously an axiomatic validation of itself. Something essential to math mimics the way the observable world seems to work. But even with all the appreciation in the world for its potency and utility, I still think you're left with the need to make direct observation. It's like the scaffolding that can safely support us to the place we think we need to be to be able to search from the right vantage point, but regardless of how beautiful an equation is, if its product can't be found in nature, then the math can't itself be considered the arbitrator.

A teapot isn't orbiting Mars just because an equation says so, but if an equation says there's a teapot orbiting Mars, then we should consider it well worth looking.

I have a funny relationship with math, and I believe I am still the only official nematode according to that thread from RS' early days when whoever it was sought to prove - to universal agreement - that 0.9... equals 1.


There is a danger, though, stemming from the sort of thinking that @surreptitious75 and I had in the comments section of my blog about some comments made by Max Tegmark. It's not an enormous step from this to that. Tegmark is a great physicist. but he should separate his ontological musings from his physics when discussing in front of a lay audience, IMO, because he always ends up turning hard physics into woo worthy of Deepity Chakra.

Extremely smart people can be dumb too! :)
 
arg-fallbackName="surreptitious75"/>
What if I were to tell you that quantum mechanics and general relativity are the same theory

Well the incompatibilities would have to be thoroughly explained away first in order for that to be true - assuming it is
I think they only appear as incompatibilities because there is a gap in our knowledge and that gap is quantum gravity
So once a theory of quantum gravity is discovered those incompatibilities will be no more but there will be other knowledge gaps - there always are
 
arg-fallbackName="surreptitious75"/>
I do not think the Universe is mathematical simply because the properties of subatomic particles can only be expressed in mathematical terms
However there is absolutely nothing wrong in scientists thinking ontologically just as long as they keep it entirely separate from their science
Ontology is the domain of philosophy not science so when a scientist is thinking ontologically they are thinking outside their area of expertise

I watched Lee Smolin on That Closer To Truth channel a couple of days ago
It deals with fundamental questions in a very accessible way so is worth watching
Smolin is an excellent physicist because he cannot be boxed in - I recommend his book The Trouble With Physics

YouTube sometimes gets a bad rap but it can be an excellent educational platform
I am currently working my way through Leonard Susskinds Stanford lectures on cosmology
He speaks slowly and precisely and I find it easy to understand what he is saying most of the time
I prefer books to videos but the problem with the former is that if you do not understand something there is no one to explain it to you

I like that the fundamental nature of space and time are being questioned by some physicists even to the point of whether they exist at all
These questions are both ontological and empirical and a reminder that nothing should be assumed to be true unless it has been falsified
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
Well the incompatibilities would have to be thoroughly explained away first in order for that to be true - assuming it is
Did you read the article? The explanation is really quite brilliant, and makes perfect sense. When it clicked, it was like the moment I first properly grokked Bell Inequality violations.

In essence, what he's saying is that, because our observations are limited by our biological relationship to time, we're limited in what we can see. In essence, that the collapse of the wavefunction and all classical mechanics is purely about limits to what we can observe because our biological relationship to time is linear.

It's a bit like MWI, but instead of the wavefunction actually collapsing, the wavefunction remains but only appears to have collapsed because of the way we perceive time.

It's Feynman's Path Integral where all paths are valid at all times, even while we're making an observation.

I think they only appear as incompatibilities because there is a gap in our knowledge and that gap is quantum gravity
So once a theory of quantum gravity is discovered those incompatibilities will be no more but there will be other knowledge gaps - there always are
That's the current view. As Marcus quite rightly describes it - assuming it pans out - this is on the order of Newton or Einstein, and could potentially rewrite GR, SR, QM, Newton, Galileo.

It's a complete ground-up reworking.

Trying very carefully not to sound like I already accept this, by the way. I don't, but I can see from a first glance that it has some legs, and there are already unique, testable predictions.

Marcus has given me some further reading.

I need to absorb this, but I don't often get this excited by a new idea in physics, and it isn't like Wolfram doesn't have significant form.
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
I do not think the Universe is mathematical simply because the properties of subatomic particles can only be expressed in mathematical terms
Since we chatted about this on the blog and I wrote a rather peeved follow-up, I've given this quite a lot of thought, and some of what you said is responsible for helping me to clarify my thought a lot, along with some brilliant guidance by Phil Scott (Vazscep).
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Here is the answer: The universe is logical. Mathematics is the language of logic.

Anything much beyond that is wibble. Most of what I said in the follow-up to those comments in whichever post it was I still stand by. Phil didn't like some of what I said, but he was talking specifically about my misuse of terminology rooted in an ahistoric view of the foundations of mathematics. The broader points I was making about numerable quantities and being able to count them still stands. Of course we can treat the universe with mathematics, because the universe is logical, and mathematics is the language of logic.
However there is absolutely nothing wrong in scientists thinking ontologically just as long as they keep it entirely separate from their science
I don't even think that's true. I think it's perfectly fine to mix ontology and science, as long as it's done very carefully and in a specific context.

Applying an ontology is actually an incredibly useful part of scientific logic. Thinking ontologically can raise whole reams of entirely different questions, and that's what good science - what good philosophy - is all about.

If you think about it, what Einstein did when he had his equivalence principle light-bulb moment was to apply an ontology. He literally reified a situation in his head and tried to work out the observational consequences.

Every hypothesis in its infancy goes through a stage in which it's indistinguishable from ontology. Each time, we push the ontological question back a step.

The problem lies in treating ontologies as having any meaning. In reality, ontological reasoning is a fantastic way of generating hypotheses. In treating them inductively, in other words.
Ontology is the domain of philosophy not science so when a scientist is thinking ontologically they are thinking outside their area of expertise
That's not true. There's no difference in logic, and no specific expertise required for ontology. To suggest otherwise is to hint at the notion that the question many ask 'why am I here?' is somehow an invalid question or outside somebody's area of expertise. Everybody has the same expertise. Some of us recognise that it's a pretty poor question, but that's more about the woolly nature of the question than anything. The thing that motivates the question is fairly obvious, and nobody has any expertise in that.
I watched Lee Smolin on That Closer To Truth channel a couple of days ago
It deals with fundamental questions in a very accessible way so is worth watching
Smolin is an excellent physicist because he cannot be boxed in - I recommend his book The Trouble With Physics
A great book. I recall speed-reading it one afternoon after some idiot bowled up to either Ratskep or Dawk spouting nonsense about Smolin, along with Three Roads to Quantum Gravity.

Not a bad afternoon's work, that. Two great books and a shitload of debunking all in one. Good times.
YouTube sometimes gets a bad rap but it can be an excellent educational platform
I love it. I've watched the Allan Adams quantum mechanics series from 2013 several times. Watched Alan Guth's General Relativity. MIT Opencourseware is the best channel. Simply oozing good stuff.
I am currently working my way through Leonard Susskinds Stanford lectures on cosmology
He speaks slowly and precisely and I find it easy to understand what he is saying most of the time
I prefer books to videos but the problem with the former is that if you do not understand something there is no one to explain it to you
That's why discussion is so good. I learned more in the first couple of years at Dawkins forum than I did in decades of reading prior, because I had people who could see where my thinking was going wrong and point me in the right direction.

The people I've interacted with over the years have been a far larger part of my education than the books, and you know how much I love books.
nothing should be assumed to be true unless it has been falsified
Dude. lol

If something's been falsified, it's definitely not true.
 
arg-fallbackName="surreptitious75"/>
I get what Wolfram is saying and it is actually very simple in principle :
We understood the world we experience but cannot understand one that is beyond our experience
At the classical level the laws of classical physics apply and at the quantum level the laws of quantum mechanics apply
And so were we quantum beings instead of classical beings then it would be the quantum world we would understand not the classical one

But if quantum mechanics and general relativity are indeed the same theory does this make a theory of quantum gravity entirely superfluous
Has physics spent the last hundred years looking for something it had no need to be looking for and if so can science learn anything from this

This is an excellent example of how there are no paradoxes in Nature because if there were Nature could not exist - the paradox is really a flaw in our thinking
Not understanding something or finding something counter intuitive is simply a limitation in our ability and not a flaw within Nature as such
Black holes display both quantum mechanics and general relativity but they exist as natural phenomena so clearly there is no paradox there

I will definitely keep watching this space - it will be interesting to see how the physics community takes to Wolframs idea


Unfalsifiable claims are non scientific by definition and this is the problem with ontology in science
Absolutely fine if there is a testable hypothesis but what if there is none - it simply remains speculation

The problem is that once an unfalsifiable hypothesis becomes popular it gets respect which makes it hard to dismiss it from that point on
I think there is always going to be a grey area between what can be tested / cannot be tested and what is true / what is not true
Imagination is of course more important than knowledge but without a testable hypothesis your imagination could also be wrong

The other problem is that some of those dismissed as cranks are actually scientists so understand what science is
And this raises another question which is what is wrong with scientists thinking differently to other scientists - to the status quo
Progress can certainly come from consensus but it can also come from individuals thinking outside the box as well
Paradigm shifts evolve from positions of virtual scepticism to one of general acceptance as noted by Thomas Kuhn
So unless what someone is proposing has actually been falsified then it should not be dismissed - even if it is false / wrong
Lack of popularity has absolutely zero bearing on whether or not something is true and argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy anyway


That sentence I wrote : nothing should be assumed to be true unless it has been falsified
Obviously should have been : nothing should be assumed to be false unless it has been falsified
Although no assumption is required because if something has been falsified then it is definitely false / wrong
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
As always, there's a lot, and I'm quite stoned and otherwise intoxicated, so I'll pick this up when I'm more coherent.
 
arg-fallbackName="surreptitious75"/>
This thing about the Universe being logical :
I do not like to apply logic to empirical reality because for me logic is an abstract and empiricism is real
However I do accept that the laws of physics are mathematical statements pertaining to observable reality
I just like to keep logic and empiricism as separate from each other as much as I can is all I am saying here
Logic and empiricism do not always agree with each other so that is one reason why they should be separate

Also if we did not understand the Universe then would we still think of it as logical [ presumably not ]
And is it possible that a Universe could exist that was not logical and so had no laws of physics at all
Would the Many Worlds Hypothesis allow for such a Universe or must every one have some laws of physics no matter how tentative
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
This thing about the Universe being logical :
I do not like to apply logic to empirical reality because for me logic is an abstract and empiricism is real
This is shoddy.

Logic is all we have to apply. Without it, we can discard all knowledge.

In fact, from the purest perspective of falsifiability and falsification, logic is actually the route to knowledge, since what we've shown to be false is what constitutes knowledge.

Eve from a broadly vindicative stance, though, this view would be flawed, since all inference is necessarily logic (and, by corollary, mathematics).
However I do accept that the laws of physics are mathematical statements pertaining to observable reality
I just like to keep logic and empiricism as separate from each other as much as I can is all I am saying here
Logic and empiricism do not always agree with each other so that is one reason why they should be separate
It's not even that they're mathematical statements it's that they're expressions in logic of relationships between numerable quantities.

The point here is that mathematics doesn't only deal with numbers, it's the entire language of logic. Whatever statement you can make, it can be expressed and analysed mathematically (I really should finish that post on Gödel that I let fall aside with other distrac.., oooh, a squirrel!)
Also if we did not understand the Universe then would we still think of it as logical [ presumably not ]
And is it possible that a Universe could exist that was not logical and so had no laws of physics at all
Would the Many Worlds Hypothesis allow for such a Universe or must every one have some laws of physics no matter how tentative
If it weren't logical, there'd be no regularity, and nothing like us could exist. Simple anthropic reasoning smacks this one into irrelevance.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
I do not like to apply logic to empirical reality because for me logic is an abstract and empiricism is real

This is something akin to naive empiricism, and it's usually a strawman of scientific method concocted by idealists. In reality, science as a process doesn't actually work just through observing stuff, explanations don't just spontaneously arise from that observation - that's what the theoretical bit is, the hypothesis-formation and theory-crafting, and for that the only principles that matter in defining what is or isn't 'correct' until checked against observation is logic.

Absent logic, you'd have no science - just a bunch of observations, the likes of which essentially any creature with sensory organs and the ability to form memories can achieve.
 
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