I can relate to objects, but I can’t relate to abstract concepts.
Sounds like you think very literally or visually. Reminds me of Michael Faraday, one of the discoverers of magnetism, who is said to have known very little math, only basic algebra, but who invented the electric motor through experiment and his ability to understand concepts visually (with no math!) It’s a different type of mind, that’s all, and quite practical. I like math and find it moderately easy, but I would never be able to figure out how to make electronic circuits by playing around with them.
What is math? Well, you have three apples and you have three skyscrapers and you have three mouse droppings...what do they all have in common? Not that materials they’re made of, but the fact that there are three of them. When you think the number ‘three’, you can imagine three of any object. It’s not limited to you being able to imagine three of your fingers...I could tell you any noun right now and you could imagine three of them.
Thank you, yes, I can understand nouns. You point at something and give it a name. I can understand three. I can’t understand how ‘three’ can travel. Because there is no such thing as ‘a’ three. I can also not understand how a three can travel in a non specific direction. I can understand how three apples can travel on a truck or through the air if I throw them. I can conceptualize these things quite easy. I can understand the 3 dimensions of LWH. I can visualize all kinds of 3 dimensional shapes. I can not visualize 4 dimensions and according to Steven Hawking, no one can.
Although I can plot a sine wave on a graph or observe it on an o-scope, I can see that these things are representative of something that is happening....an event. I can not visualize a ‘wave’. I can visualize someone waving their hand in the air. I understand a wave is a disturbance through a medium. The hand disturbs air molecules. The wave does not travel the hand does.
We use math to describe waves and energy and fields. When theories use these words interchangeably as nouns and verbs, I realize that it is not only grammatically incorrect at times, it is nonsensical and so I must disregard what I am being told.
Sometimes, difficult to understand jargon conceals actual nonsense, but sometimes it’s simply a way for people who’re well versed in a subject to communicate with each other efficiently. As a rule of thumb, if people are able to successfully predict things in advance which you can’t predict, or make things you can’t make, then you should assume that they really do know something you don’t.
Nouns and verbs can not be used interchangeably. You can warm your gun but you can’t fire your feet. Love doesn’t move mountains and one can not carry a force.
If we are chatting like two good ole boys then fine, we don’t necessarily have to define terms. If you are making a hypothesis, then you had better define your KEY TERMS. To be used scientifically words must be precise, unambiguous and non-contradictory.
Science describes what has already happened. I can predict the sun will come up tomorrow, but if the sun supernovas and disintegrates the earth...well so much for my prediction.
Scientists do define their terms, much more precisely than we generally do in ordinary conversation. When scientists say matter has both wavelike and particlelike properties, they have a meaning so precise they can write it into a computer program. The issue here is not that their terms are faulty, it’s that you don’t understand what they mean.
Taking the outside view—that is, forgetting this is a conversation about QM—this sounds a little hand-wavy. It seems natural to ask for precise definitions of basic terms in an article about QM, and for consistency in their usage.
I can’t draw an electron. In fact, nobody can really draw any sort of fundamental particle. They don’t look like anything. This might seem like a cop out, or a way to handwave away the fact that we don’t know what they look like, but it’s not. On the scale that fundamental particles exist on, the mechanisms which give rise to the phenomenon we experience as “looking like something” don’t exist. An electron cannot look like anything.
I can understand something and still tell you that it makes no sense. Do you understand that? I can also regurgitate the definition of phase angles that I memorized in 1978, does that mean I understand it?
If you insist that you understand what scientists mean when they call matter wavelike and particlelike, why don’t you try explaining it? That much, I do understand, well enough that I can explain what it means I should observe regarding matter on the particle scale and what I should not, and I will be able to tell if your explanation is correct.
I also can’t explain directionless arrows, because to the best of my understanding, Eliezer isn’t actually talking about directionless arrows at any point. If he is, my understanding of this post is wrong. What he does talk about are arrows, figurative entities which indicate both what direction from the origin something is pointing and how far away from it is is (I’m not even going to try explaining what the origin in this context is and what it means to move away from it, not because I don’t understand it, but because it would take way more time and effort than I’m willing to put in right now to make it comprehensible to you,) but although the arrows point in a specific direction, we can’t tell which direction it is. Imagine an actual, physical arrow affixed to a pole in the ground, and the arrow is pointing either north or south. Imagine also that we have no way of knowing which way is north or south, we have no compass, the sky is overcast, we have no landmarks to orient by, etcetera. We do not know whether the arrow is pointing north or south, but we can still measure how long it is.
This is not a perfect analogy, but if you think of it this way you’ll have a better idea of what Eliezer was talking about if you just think “directionless arrows = nonsense.”
Actually, I already explained wave earlier. “A disturbance thru a medium” is the best definition which can be used consistently. Of course we could refer to the popular definition, from WIKI or whatever. But you asked me my definition. A particle is a discrete “piece” of matter, or in the case of a photon, a discrete ‘amount’ of energy, or quanta.
“A disturbance through a medium” is not what scientists mean when they say that matter has wavelike properties though. It doesn’t matter what “your definition” is, if it’s not what scientists mean when they use the phrase “matter has both wavelike and particlelike properties” to communicate an idea to each other.
In any case, I’ve been suspicious for a while, but at this point I think it’s very likely that you’re deliberately trolling this site. You’re combining a significant level of familiarity with scientific anecdotes with a profound, seemingly willful level of ignorance, and I think you’re faking it.
No, not exactly like that, as I just explained in my last post. However, I have some paradigms that have allowed me to successfully cut through a lot of BS. If I discover they do not apply to mathematical physics, then I won’t waste any more of your or my time, that you can “count” on.
No, you’re not making too much sense for someone who’s profoundly ignorant, you’re making too little sense for someone who knows what you seem to know. It’s possible that you’ve actually gone out of your way to pick up all these words and pass phrases without having any idea what they mean, and that’s exactly what you’re acting like, but I don’t buy it.
I don’t want to continue a discussion with you if I think you’re willfully refusing to understand, but I like this analogy, so I’m going to toss it out and if by some chance you’re not faking and it actually helps, it’ll give us something to work with.
A person who is born blind and grows up that way does not have the neurological faculties to process an image and take information from it the way we do. A blind person may have a concept of “sphere” or “cube,” and know what they will feel if they run their hands over one, but if a person who’d grown up blind were given functional eyes and looked at a sphere, they would not be able to tell you in advance that by running their hands over it they should feel a smooth surface that curves uniformly in on itself. This was an issue which was debated for some time by philosophers, but eventually we developed the medical technology to actually give eyesight to some people who’d grown up without it, and it stopped being just a matter of “logical argument,” and became something we could go out and actually check.
If you were to take a person who’d grown up blind, and try to explain the concept of looking like things to them, it would be incomprehensible to them. Generally, blind people take it for granted that sight is a real phenomenon that they’re missing out on, because civilization around them runs on it in such a way that it wouldn’t make much sense if all the sighted people were just making it up. You could describe the mechanics of sight to a blind person, but they will not be able to conceive of the idea of “getting a picture in your head” the way we do. If a blind person told you “Don’t mess around with math and diagrams (which I can’t see anyway, so fuck you,) just give me an explanation of this whole “picture in your head” thing which you say lets you tell what shape something is without touching it,” no matter how you explained it, you wouldn’t be able to get them to understand sight like we do. It’s not that there’s something wrong with our models of how sight works, the problem is in the brain of the person who’s never developed a capacity to deal with vision.
Similarly, our brains don’t have the capacity to picture what’s going on on the scale of fundamental particles. There’s no reason why they should. Like blind people dealing with sight, we can explain what’s actually going on, but it’s never going to make intuitive sense to us. Can’t visualize a zero dimensional particle? Well, who says fundamental particles have to have size? Who says there can’t be any real thing which doesn’t take up space, so you can pack any number of them together without ever getting a bunch an inch across? Who says that you can’t really tell what shape something is until you run your hands over it?
If a blind person, unable to comprehend sight, decides that sight doesn’t exist, there will be things in the world around them that just don’t make sense to them. Similarly, there are physical theories which we can’t picture, but we can tell that the world around us makes a lot more sense if they’re true than if they’re not.
Your method of argumentation is a little unusual and perhaps a bit off-putting, but I don’t know why all your posts are being systematically downvoted this low. It’s clear from posts like this one that you’re not merely trolling, but I think you’re taking on too much at once. Also, your style is not very LessWrong friendly and you’re posting a lot. Maybe slow it down a bit, get familiar with the lay of the land a bit more.
I, for one, would like to hear a bit more about your misgivings. You’ve said some interesting things so far that have got me thinking.
As he comments, his posts show a clear disagreement with the scientific method. That, not the truth of quantum mechanics, is a basic part of what this community calls rationality.
Later in this sequence, Eliezer asserts that QM represents a failure of science to be as rational as it could be. The example can’t be understood unless one has a fairly good grasp of QM, but the truth of QM is not precisely the point of this particular series of essays.
(As an aside, I’m not completely convinced of the point because I think the example is poor, but that also is unrelated to the truth of quantum mechanics).
Further, explain a zero dimensional particle without math or magic.
Descriptions of anything to do with ‘zero’ contain math, either explicitly or implicitly. Demanding that others explain mathematical things without using math is a highly dubious tactic and I’m not sure what it is supposed to achieve.
My bad, I meant no dimension. 0 is for counting. Numbers can do anything apparently. Words can not. Mathematicians say they understand each other and perhaps they do. Perhaps I just can’t use EY’s magic tool yet?
One can’t really “explain” a particle. I would say, however, that if you cannot show the shape of the particle (how it occupies space), it is somewhat questionable to call it a “particle” in any classical sense that I’m familiar with.
I don’t think anyone disputes that the classical definition of particle and wave don’t really apply in the quantum mechanics level. But QM makes good predictions. If QM talked about the blicket/fand distinction, and said that blicket was sort of like particle, and fand was sort of like wave, would you be more comfortable with it?
Because QM is the only scientific theory that explains observations, including the weird ones. That’s something that needs to be acknowledged. The idea that math can’t be used to describe reality is just a more specific way of saying that we can’t describe reality at all.
Can you draw a dimensionless particle for me please?
All drawings that we do are abstractions. They represent something from a reality (fictional or allegedly actual) but they are never the same as the actual thing—they just represent it. Mathematics does much the same thing—just better.
Depends how far apart you space them. In a black hole, you could crunch up all the particles in existence into the same space, and you still wouldn’t be any closer to spanning the length of an inch.
We might not be able to visualize this, but our brains developed to help us operate on a scale where things actually do behave as if they were all made of substantial lumps of stuff which take up space and two things can’t be in the same space because the space is filled. That’s the sort of thing our brains evolved to deal with, so whether or not reality really works like that at the most fundamental level, we should expect ourselves to be bad at envisioning things that don’t work like that. For a rather long time, scientists thought that reality was like that all the way down. But then when we developed the technology to do experiments which actually probe what’s going on at that level, we started finding that reality simply doesn’t work that way. You can try and envision matter as being made of tiny little lumps of stuff bopping around, but if you do, you will unavoidably end up drawing conclusions that contradict what we find is actually going on.
“I can’t get a picture of this in my head” is not a rebuttal of a physical theory, because there’s no reason that our heads must actually be equipped to create pictures of how the fundamental level of reality works.
“I can’t get a picture of this in my head” is not a rebuttal of a physical theory, because there’s no reason that our heads must actually be equipped to create pictures of how the fundamental level of reality works.
Agreed, the basic structure of reality may be unvisualizable and otherwise incomprehensible to us. However, a theory is ostensibly a physical explanation, not merely a mathematical summary of the observed data. Reading over Monkeymind’s posts, it seems the point he is making is that these theories sort of seem to “feel like” physical explanations, but in the end are “just math.”
The question naturally arises, to the newbie at least, of what the difference really is between a mathematical summary of the data we’ve collected and a mathematical theory of how (by what mechanism) a physical phenomenon occurs.
I can’t explain QM very well, but here’s a video of “someone that can”. I would recommend paying special attention to the speech he gives around 37:00 minutes in about concepts like “wave” and “particle”, which we have coined in the macroscopic world and how we should not really apply terms which have mutually exclusive qualities in the macroscopic world to describe the world of fundamental particles.
His answers might still be unsatisfactory to you, but its the best I can offer.
Yes, “we should not really apply mutually exclusive terms.” And thank you for using the word concept when relating to wave and particle. I think the whole issue is knowing the dif between concepts and objects. Physics should be about objects. Of course all words are concepts, but if they can not resolve down to objects, they should not be used in ones hypothesis or theory.
Thanx for the link, hopefully I will be able to get to it.
My high-school physics class spent a lot of time talking about distances, and time, and forces, and velocity, and accelerations, and vectors. Neither distance, time, force, acceleration, velocity, nor vectors are objects; they are concepts we’ve formulated to characterize particular patterns in the ways objects behave. They sure seemed useful to me. So I’m inclined to reject this claim.
Just because we can’t visualize something doesn’t mean we can’t work out the rules. If quantum mechanical models accurately describe what’s happening, the fact that we can’t picture it in our heads is not a problem.
I would be a lot more willing to help you understand if I didn’t think you’re being obtuse on purpose though.
If quantum mechanical models accurately describe what’s happening, the fact that we can’t picture it in our heads is not a problem.
I think there’s a danger of equivocating here on the words “what’s happening.” In other words, which “what’s happening” do the QM models describe?
I’ll elaborate. If we observe X, do the QM models describe X, or do they describe the (so far unobserved) phenomena that may underly X?
If the mathematical QM model merely describes X, it’s hard to see how it is anything other than a very succinct cataloging of the observations, put in a very useful form. That’s quite an achievement, but I can understand the hesitation with calling it an explanation or a theory.
If the QM model actually describes some as-yet unobserved phenomena that is proposed to underly X, then it seems like it avoids Monkeymind’s criticisms because there is actually something additional being posited to be happening, behind the scenes as it were.
If it is the latter, I’d be interested in seeing an example (anything in QM).
If the QM model actually describes some as-yet unobserved phenomena that is proposed to underly X, then it seems like it avoids Monkeymind’s criticisms because there is actually something additional being posited to be happening, behind the scenes as it were.
There are probably more examples than I’m aware of, but as I pointed out in an earlier comment to Monkeymind, quantum entanglement, which was regarded as an extremely counterintuitive prediction, was predicted by quantum mechanical models well in advance of observation.
Yes, but I’m a lawyer and lack the background to give a more specific example. All I’m trying to say is that disbelieving QM does have practical, real-world consequences.
Well, I agree that there are things about the scientific process that could be done better, and I think most of the other people here would also, but I expect we disagree about the specifics. Can you tell me what you think ought to be done differently and why you think it would work better?
I think it would be easier to understand if you were to frame it in terms of specific examples. Supposing you want to find something out, how would you expect a scientist to do it, and how would you do it differently? Try using an example with a specific question, like “what makes it rain?” or, if you want to exercise some more creativity, something that we can’t easily look up the answers to, like “if you put someone in a position of power, do they really become more inclined to take advantage of people, or is it just a difference of opportunity?”
At this point, I don’t think we can work through this article without hashing out our differences about the scientific method. There’s too much of a gap of inferential distance (and please actually read that post I’m linking to, I’m not just putting it there for thematic appropriateness.)
This makes good sense and is the very reason why it is crucial to define ones KEY TERMS in the hypothesis stage. It is why I press for precise definitions, only to be told I do not understand or I am being obtuse, etc. I have been told that scientists use precise terms, but wave, particle, energy are anything but. It seems that they are having difficulty telling the difference between nouns and verbs as has already been discussed. Let us stick with WAVE for now:
Give me EY’s definition of wave (as pertains to this article). I gave mine earlier and was told it was not the scientific one as relating to the particle/wave duality. If wave is a disturbance through a medium, then wave is not an it but a what. This whole wave/particle paradox might have been avoided had someone defined the terms waaaay back then.
Scientists did define their terms way back then. They never introduced the idea of a wave/particle duality without knowing exactly what they meant.
The reason I keep diverting from the topic is that it takes more than just defining one’s terms to communicate complex ideas without a shared body of information. Try and explain evolution to a person who’s been brought up in a fundamentalist household, for instance, and while you might pat yourself on the back afterwards for an explanation well delivered, they’re probably not going to come away understanding it, unless you take the time to bridge the entire gap of uncomprehension.
I seriously suggest reading the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence, which I linked to before, because some of the points you’re expressing are misconceptions that it was written for the specific purpose of addressing. Eliezer wrote the sequence in order to bring people up to the point of being able to meaningfully discuss the ideas we work with here without talking past each other. He put a lot of work into them, and I’d rather not replicate it all when it’s already there for exactly that reason. There is a reason that Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions is the first in the suggested reading order of the sequences, and the quantum physics sequence is the fifth.
Yes, it does take far more than just defining ones terms, but we must start there b4 we can go anywhere else! I don’t mean a infinite number of now define that, now define that....just the KEY TERMS of one’s hypothesis b4 moving on to the theory. Whatever the defs are they must be used CONSISTENTLY.
I agree that key terms need a definition. They have apparently all been defined before, but no one here has yet shown an interest in giving those (or any) precise definitions right now. I’m not sure why, especially given that this is LessWrong. I’d help you out on that, but I honestly don’t know the precise definition that QM theorists use for wave. Surely someone must know?
While there are plenty of issues affecting reproducibility of scientific results, physics is much better in this area than other sciences having stricter requirements to establish statistical significance.
When theories use these words interchangeably as nouns and verbs, I realize that it is not only grammatically incorrect at times, it is nonsensical and so I must disregard what I am being told.
I’ve read in a lot of books on quantum physics that yeah, the ways of explaining it with commonplace nouns and verbs don’t make sense. But the math makes predictions anyway, so we can make a wild guess that whatever reality is like on that level, it has something that corresponds to our mathematical concepts. There are ‘particles’ which are a little bit like our everyday conception of the word (a small piece of matter) and a little bit not, since no commonplace ‘particle’ is massless. But the math only gives correct predictions if you have some particles, like photons, be massless...and it’s simpler to assume that they actually exist than that we’re getting the whole theory horribly wrong and somehow still getting useful predictions out of it.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. Predictions and wild guesses! QM only makes correct predictions if one invents massless particles like photons. The LHC will never discover a massless particle no matter how many billions of dollars are poured into it. Marge Simpson was right!
The fact that QM says things about reality that you don’t like doesn’t change the fact that QM makes correct predictions. Many commenters in this thread have pointed out that there is a mountain of experimental evidence in favor of QM and against “intuitive” theories of physics. You have essentially ignored that body of evidence and insisted that reality must be simple, intuitive, and easy to explain. At this point, I have to ask: How much evidence would it take to convince you that our universe’s physics are complicated? What observation would you need to see for you to believe that reality isn’t always intuitive and easy to understand?
It is not about weather or not I like that QM makes “correct predictions” because reality is not about ’predictions.” Is it up for vote? It is not about mountains of experimental evidence in favor of QM., because evidence is opinion based on fallible human observations (5 senses). Nature does not ask for anyone’s opinion.
Tell me something: Is “Monkeymind” intended to be an avatar account, along the lines of “Clippy”. If so you have absolutely nailed it. You have role played the mind of the human mind (with its monkey-kinship) as it grapples with understanding physics at a level that is beyond its usual scope of practical optimisation and you have done so perfectly. I just can’t tell whether you meant it that way or not.
Yes, and you are not answering any questions I put forth further illustrating monkeyminds at work here. Care to show me where I don’t understand physics. I can argue that you do not. In general because physics should be abut objects that exist and in particular because you can not give me a hypothesis of what object mediates the phenomena of light, let alone a theory which explains your hypothesis. All you seem to be capable of doing is be condescending.
Tell me something: Is “Monkeymind” intended to be an avatar account, along the lines of “Clippy”.
Yes
That being the case trying to argue you into not thinking like the monkeymind avatar in question would be equivalent to trying to convince Clippy that paperclips really aren’t all they are cracked up to be—pointless. If you admit (as you do above) that your account is a satirical role-play account rather than you sincerely expressing your ignorance then you shouldn’t expect people to be obliged to buy into your games. Feel free to retract the ‘yes’ at any time if you wish to be taken seriously.
All you seem to be capable of doing is be condescending.
If you role play an avatar that is bad at thinking it is inevitable that it will seem to you like people are treating you as if you are stupid.
Sorry, I did not understand what you meant by Clippy. Never heard of it b4, so I answered hastily. I use Monkeymind everywhere. I used this avatar originally when discussing evolution with theists, and just kept the name.
I am being serious, and so obviously my questions are serious, and they must be good ones because so far, there have been few reasonable answers. One may say that it is because I truly do not understand the topic(s). Feel free to set me straight any time, rather than just telling me I don’t understand.
If you would like to show me where my ignorance lies or that my thinking is flawed, I would appreciate it. I don’t like being wrong, but I don’t mind being corrected. In fact, I desire it so that I do not have to continue holding on to outdated or non-useful explanations.
However, let me state that I do not necessarily think there is a wrong or a right conclusion to the scientific method. Just explanations which are rational or not rational. Explanations that make sense or do not make sense. If this is the flaw in my thinking you are alluding to, then feel free to make a case for that. If it is about the thot experiment of computer generated amplitudes being fired at make believe half-silvered mirrors, then I am all ears.
Theoretical physics is conceptual. Technology (mostly trial & error) is empirical.
Maybe in the process, I will learn something and I can help you realize the limitations of math and the current state of your (apparently collective) understanding and use of the scientific method.
It is not about weather or not I like that QM makes “correct predictions” because reality is not about ’predictions.”
I strongly recommend that you find a physicist and say this to them. They will almost certainly disagree, because making successful predictions is what science is all about. Theories explain, yes, but they do so by offering a mechanism or creating a model for how something works, and the only way to tell if that model is correct is by seeing if it can accurately predict reality. To invent an accurate post hoc explanation if you need the ability to test its validity, and the only way to do that is to see what advance predictions it makes and test those. This is, of course, the reason scientists perform experiments.
The rule based language of math only describes, it has no explanatory value at all!
Again, I strongly recommend you speak to a physicist about this, because it just isn’t true. In the meantime, take a look at this LW post, which is a clear example of how a mathematical theory of physics, in this case Newtonian physics, can make predictions.
Give me a hypothesis of what object mediates the phenomena of light and then your theory can explain refraction, reflection, diffraction, dble slit and half silver mirror experiments.
This is my hypothesis. The things it deals with aren’t “objects” in the way the word “objects” is usually used, because the term generally refers to things made up of more than one atom, and QM describes things at a much lower level. However, QM does helpfully provide precise mathematical rules for how these sub-atomic things behave, some of which are outlined in the original post. We know that this explanation is true, at least to a certain degree of approximation, because of its experimental success at predicting some of the things you listed (double slit experiments, etc.). You can talk all you want about how much this doesn’t “make sense,” but the fact remains, the mathematical model outlined in QM is extremely good at predicting reality, which strongly suggests that it really does describe what’s really true.
The point is QM has to invent non-existent massless particles to make their math come out. Nature could care less about mathematical constructs or models.
And BTW, speaking of point, can you define point for me? Everyone here seems to want to tell me what I don’t understand. Perhaps you can educate me.
x
Sounds like you think very literally or visually. Reminds me of Michael Faraday, one of the discoverers of magnetism, who is said to have known very little math, only basic algebra, but who invented the electric motor through experiment and his ability to understand concepts visually (with no math!) It’s a different type of mind, that’s all, and quite practical. I like math and find it moderately easy, but I would never be able to figure out how to make electronic circuits by playing around with them.
What is math? Well, you have three apples and you have three skyscrapers and you have three mouse droppings...what do they all have in common? Not that materials they’re made of, but the fact that there are three of them. When you think the number ‘three’, you can imagine three of any object. It’s not limited to you being able to imagine three of your fingers...I could tell you any noun right now and you could imagine three of them.
Thank you, yes, I can understand nouns. You point at something and give it a name. I can understand three. I can’t understand how ‘three’ can travel. Because there is no such thing as ‘a’ three. I can also not understand how a three can travel in a non specific direction. I can understand how three apples can travel on a truck or through the air if I throw them. I can conceptualize these things quite easy. I can understand the 3 dimensions of LWH. I can visualize all kinds of 3 dimensional shapes. I can not visualize 4 dimensions and according to Steven Hawking, no one can.
Although I can plot a sine wave on a graph or observe it on an o-scope, I can see that these things are representative of something that is happening....an event. I can not visualize a ‘wave’. I can visualize someone waving their hand in the air. I understand a wave is a disturbance through a medium. The hand disturbs air molecules. The wave does not travel the hand does.
We use math to describe waves and energy and fields. When theories use these words interchangeably as nouns and verbs, I realize that it is not only grammatically incorrect at times, it is nonsensical and so I must disregard what I am being told.
A word can be a noun and a verb. You can warm your feet at a fire, or fire a gun, for instance. The informational content is what’s important, not the words themselves.
Sometimes, difficult to understand jargon conceals actual nonsense, but sometimes it’s simply a way for people who’re well versed in a subject to communicate with each other efficiently. As a rule of thumb, if people are able to successfully predict things in advance which you can’t predict, or make things you can’t make, then you should assume that they really do know something you don’t.
Nouns and verbs can not be used interchangeably. You can warm your gun but you can’t fire your feet. Love doesn’t move mountains and one can not carry a force.
If we are chatting like two good ole boys then fine, we don’t necessarily have to define terms. If you are making a hypothesis, then you had better define your KEY TERMS. To be used scientifically words must be precise, unambiguous and non-contradictory.
Science describes what has already happened. I can predict the sun will come up tomorrow, but if the sun supernovas and disintegrates the earth...well so much for my prediction.
Scientists do define their terms, much more precisely than we generally do in ordinary conversation. When scientists say matter has both wavelike and particlelike properties, they have a meaning so precise they can write it into a computer program. The issue here is not that their terms are faulty, it’s that you don’t understand what they mean.
Taking the outside view—that is, forgetting this is a conversation about QM—this sounds a little hand-wavy. It seems natural to ask for precise definitions of basic terms in an article about QM, and for consistency in their usage.
x
I can’t draw an electron. In fact, nobody can really draw any sort of fundamental particle. They don’t look like anything. This might seem like a cop out, or a way to handwave away the fact that we don’t know what they look like, but it’s not. On the scale that fundamental particles exist on, the mechanisms which give rise to the phenomenon we experience as “looking like something” don’t exist. An electron cannot look like anything.
No, it doesn’t.
If you insist that you understand what scientists mean when they call matter wavelike and particlelike, why don’t you try explaining it? That much, I do understand, well enough that I can explain what it means I should observe regarding matter on the particle scale and what I should not, and I will be able to tell if your explanation is correct.
I also can’t explain directionless arrows, because to the best of my understanding, Eliezer isn’t actually talking about directionless arrows at any point. If he is, my understanding of this post is wrong. What he does talk about are arrows, figurative entities which indicate both what direction from the origin something is pointing and how far away from it is is (I’m not even going to try explaining what the origin in this context is and what it means to move away from it, not because I don’t understand it, but because it would take way more time and effort than I’m willing to put in right now to make it comprehensible to you,) but although the arrows point in a specific direction, we can’t tell which direction it is. Imagine an actual, physical arrow affixed to a pole in the ground, and the arrow is pointing either north or south. Imagine also that we have no way of knowing which way is north or south, we have no compass, the sky is overcast, we have no landmarks to orient by, etcetera. We do not know whether the arrow is pointing north or south, but we can still measure how long it is.
This is not a perfect analogy, but if you think of it this way you’ll have a better idea of what Eliezer was talking about if you just think “directionless arrows = nonsense.”
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“A disturbance through a medium” is not what scientists mean when they say that matter has wavelike properties though. It doesn’t matter what “your definition” is, if it’s not what scientists mean when they use the phrase “matter has both wavelike and particlelike properties” to communicate an idea to each other.
In any case, I’ve been suspicious for a while, but at this point I think it’s very likely that you’re deliberately trolling this site. You’re combining a significant level of familiarity with scientific anecdotes with a profound, seemingly willful level of ignorance, and I think you’re faking it.
Reminds me a bit of this.
No, not exactly like that, as I just explained in my last post. However, I have some paradigms that have allowed me to successfully cut through a lot of BS. If I discover they do not apply to mathematical physics, then I won’t waste any more of your or my time, that you can “count” on.
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No, you’re not making too much sense for someone who’s profoundly ignorant, you’re making too little sense for someone who knows what you seem to know. It’s possible that you’ve actually gone out of your way to pick up all these words and pass phrases without having any idea what they mean, and that’s exactly what you’re acting like, but I don’t buy it.
I don’t want to continue a discussion with you if I think you’re willfully refusing to understand, but I like this analogy, so I’m going to toss it out and if by some chance you’re not faking and it actually helps, it’ll give us something to work with.
A person who is born blind and grows up that way does not have the neurological faculties to process an image and take information from it the way we do. A blind person may have a concept of “sphere” or “cube,” and know what they will feel if they run their hands over one, but if a person who’d grown up blind were given functional eyes and looked at a sphere, they would not be able to tell you in advance that by running their hands over it they should feel a smooth surface that curves uniformly in on itself. This was an issue which was debated for some time by philosophers, but eventually we developed the medical technology to actually give eyesight to some people who’d grown up without it, and it stopped being just a matter of “logical argument,” and became something we could go out and actually check.
If you were to take a person who’d grown up blind, and try to explain the concept of looking like things to them, it would be incomprehensible to them. Generally, blind people take it for granted that sight is a real phenomenon that they’re missing out on, because civilization around them runs on it in such a way that it wouldn’t make much sense if all the sighted people were just making it up. You could describe the mechanics of sight to a blind person, but they will not be able to conceive of the idea of “getting a picture in your head” the way we do. If a blind person told you “Don’t mess around with math and diagrams (which I can’t see anyway, so fuck you,) just give me an explanation of this whole “picture in your head” thing which you say lets you tell what shape something is without touching it,” no matter how you explained it, you wouldn’t be able to get them to understand sight like we do. It’s not that there’s something wrong with our models of how sight works, the problem is in the brain of the person who’s never developed a capacity to deal with vision.
Similarly, our brains don’t have the capacity to picture what’s going on on the scale of fundamental particles. There’s no reason why they should. Like blind people dealing with sight, we can explain what’s actually going on, but it’s never going to make intuitive sense to us. Can’t visualize a zero dimensional particle? Well, who says fundamental particles have to have size? Who says there can’t be any real thing which doesn’t take up space, so you can pack any number of them together without ever getting a bunch an inch across? Who says that you can’t really tell what shape something is until you run your hands over it?
If a blind person, unable to comprehend sight, decides that sight doesn’t exist, there will be things in the world around them that just don’t make sense to them. Similarly, there are physical theories which we can’t picture, but we can tell that the world around us makes a lot more sense if they’re true than if they’re not.
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Your method of argumentation is a little unusual and perhaps a bit off-putting, but I don’t know why all your posts are being systematically downvoted this low. It’s clear from posts like this one that you’re not merely trolling, but I think you’re taking on too much at once. Also, your style is not very LessWrong friendly and you’re posting a lot. Maybe slow it down a bit, get familiar with the lay of the land a bit more.
I, for one, would like to hear a bit more about your misgivings. You’ve said some interesting things so far that have got me thinking.
As he comments, his posts show a clear disagreement with the scientific method. That, not the truth of quantum mechanics, is a basic part of what this community calls rationality.
Later in this sequence, Eliezer asserts that QM represents a failure of science to be as rational as it could be. The example can’t be understood unless one has a fairly good grasp of QM, but the truth of QM is not precisely the point of this particular series of essays.
(As an aside, I’m not completely convinced of the point because I think the example is poor, but that also is unrelated to the truth of quantum mechanics).
Descriptions of anything to do with ‘zero’ contain math, either explicitly or implicitly. Demanding that others explain mathematical things without using math is a highly dubious tactic and I’m not sure what it is supposed to achieve.
My bad, I meant no dimension. 0 is for counting. Numbers can do anything apparently. Words can not. Mathematicians say they understand each other and perhaps they do. Perhaps I just can’t use EY’s magic tool yet?
One can’t really “explain” a particle. I would say, however, that if you cannot show the shape of the particle (how it occupies space), it is somewhat questionable to call it a “particle” in any classical sense that I’m familiar with.
I don’t think anyone disputes that the classical definition of particle and wave don’t really apply in the quantum mechanics level. But QM makes good predictions. If QM talked about the blicket/fand distinction, and said that blicket was sort of like particle, and fand was sort of like wave, would you be more comfortable with it?
Because QM is the only scientific theory that explains observations, including the weird ones. That’s something that needs to be acknowledged. The idea that math can’t be used to describe reality is just a more specific way of saying that we can’t describe reality at all.
All drawings that we do are abstractions. They represent something from a reality (fictional or allegedly actual) but they are never the same as the actual thing—they just represent it. Mathematics does much the same thing—just better.
OK, then draw a dimensionless point for me. If you can’t do that then describe it.
I plus thee for humor! That’s what I thot. Now how many of these makes up a one inch line?
Depends how far apart you space them. In a black hole, you could crunch up all the particles in existence into the same space, and you still wouldn’t be any closer to spanning the length of an inch.
We might not be able to visualize this, but our brains developed to help us operate on a scale where things actually do behave as if they were all made of substantial lumps of stuff which take up space and two things can’t be in the same space because the space is filled. That’s the sort of thing our brains evolved to deal with, so whether or not reality really works like that at the most fundamental level, we should expect ourselves to be bad at envisioning things that don’t work like that. For a rather long time, scientists thought that reality was like that all the way down. But then when we developed the technology to do experiments which actually probe what’s going on at that level, we started finding that reality simply doesn’t work that way. You can try and envision matter as being made of tiny little lumps of stuff bopping around, but if you do, you will unavoidably end up drawing conclusions that contradict what we find is actually going on.
“I can’t get a picture of this in my head” is not a rebuttal of a physical theory, because there’s no reason that our heads must actually be equipped to create pictures of how the fundamental level of reality works.
Agreed, the basic structure of reality may be unvisualizable and otherwise incomprehensible to us. However, a theory is ostensibly a physical explanation, not merely a mathematical summary of the observed data. Reading over Monkeymind’s posts, it seems the point he is making is that these theories sort of seem to “feel like” physical explanations, but in the end are “just math.”
The question naturally arises, to the newbie at least, of what the difference really is between a mathematical summary of the data we’ve collected and a mathematical theory of how (by what mechanism) a physical phenomenon occurs.
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I can’t explain QM very well, but here’s a video of “someone that can”. I would recommend paying special attention to the speech he gives around 37:00 minutes in about concepts like “wave” and “particle”, which we have coined in the macroscopic world and how we should not really apply terms which have mutually exclusive qualities in the macroscopic world to describe the world of fundamental particles.
His answers might still be unsatisfactory to you, but its the best I can offer.
Yes, “we should not really apply mutually exclusive terms.” And thank you for using the word concept when relating to wave and particle. I think the whole issue is knowing the dif between concepts and objects. Physics should be about objects. Of course all words are concepts, but if they can not resolve down to objects, they should not be used in ones hypothesis or theory.
Thanx for the link, hopefully I will be able to get to it.
My high-school physics class spent a lot of time talking about distances, and time, and forces, and velocity, and accelerations, and vectors. Neither distance, time, force, acceleration, velocity, nor vectors are objects; they are concepts we’ve formulated to characterize particular patterns in the ways objects behave. They sure seemed useful to me. So I’m inclined to reject this claim.
Why shouldn’t physics talk about concepts? Or first, what is your definition of “object” and “concept”—even just by examples.
Just because we can’t visualize something doesn’t mean we can’t work out the rules. If quantum mechanical models accurately describe what’s happening, the fact that we can’t picture it in our heads is not a problem.
I would be a lot more willing to help you understand if I didn’t think you’re being obtuse on purpose though.
I think there’s a danger of equivocating here on the words “what’s happening.” In other words, which “what’s happening” do the QM models describe?
I’ll elaborate. If we observe X, do the QM models describe X, or do they describe the (so far unobserved) phenomena that may underly X?
If the mathematical QM model merely describes X, it’s hard to see how it is anything other than a very succinct cataloging of the observations, put in a very useful form. That’s quite an achievement, but I can understand the hesitation with calling it an explanation or a theory.
If the QM model actually describes some as-yet unobserved phenomena that is proposed to underly X, then it seems like it avoids Monkeymind’s criticisms because there is actually something additional being posited to be happening, behind the scenes as it were.
If it is the latter, I’d be interested in seeing an example (anything in QM).
There are probably more examples than I’m aware of, but as I pointed out in an earlier comment to Monkeymind, quantum entanglement, which was regarded as an extremely counterintuitive prediction, was predicted by quantum mechanical models well in advance of observation.
ETA: Bose-Einstein condensates also come to mind.
If QM were false, computer circuits would not work.
That depends how false, and in what ways.
Yes, but I’m a lawyer and lack the background to give a more specific example. All I’m trying to say is that disbelieving QM does have practical, real-world consequences.
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Well, I agree that there are things about the scientific process that could be done better, and I think most of the other people here would also, but I expect we disagree about the specifics. Can you tell me what you think ought to be done differently and why you think it would work better?
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That’s an extremely unclear explanation.
I think it would be easier to understand if you were to frame it in terms of specific examples. Supposing you want to find something out, how would you expect a scientist to do it, and how would you do it differently? Try using an example with a specific question, like “what makes it rain?” or, if you want to exercise some more creativity, something that we can’t easily look up the answers to, like “if you put someone in a position of power, do they really become more inclined to take advantage of people, or is it just a difference of opportunity?”
At this point, I don’t think we can work through this article without hashing out our differences about the scientific method. There’s too much of a gap of inferential distance (and please actually read that post I’m linking to, I’m not just putting it there for thematic appropriateness.)
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Scientists did define their terms way back then. They never introduced the idea of a wave/particle duality without knowing exactly what they meant.
The reason I keep diverting from the topic is that it takes more than just defining one’s terms to communicate complex ideas without a shared body of information. Try and explain evolution to a person who’s been brought up in a fundamentalist household, for instance, and while you might pat yourself on the back afterwards for an explanation well delivered, they’re probably not going to come away understanding it, unless you take the time to bridge the entire gap of uncomprehension.
I seriously suggest reading the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence, which I linked to before, because some of the points you’re expressing are misconceptions that it was written for the specific purpose of addressing. Eliezer wrote the sequence in order to bring people up to the point of being able to meaningfully discuss the ideas we work with here without talking past each other. He put a lot of work into them, and I’d rather not replicate it all when it’s already there for exactly that reason. There is a reason that Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions is the first in the suggested reading order of the sequences, and the quantum physics sequence is the fifth.
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I agree that key terms need a definition. They have apparently all been defined before, but no one here has yet shown an interest in giving those (or any) precise definitions right now. I’m not sure why, especially given that this is LessWrong. I’d help you out on that, but I honestly don’t know the precise definition that QM theorists use for wave. Surely someone must know?
What wrong answers do you see it giving?
While there are plenty of issues affecting reproducibility of scientific results, physics is much better in this area than other sciences having stricter requirements to establish statistical significance.
How big is an “inch” again? I’m stuck in the 21st century over here. We haven’t used inches since before my parents were born.
More seriously, why would I try to make up a one inch line out of dimensionless points? That sounds difficult and doesn’t seem to prove anything.
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I’ve read in a lot of books on quantum physics that yeah, the ways of explaining it with commonplace nouns and verbs don’t make sense. But the math makes predictions anyway, so we can make a wild guess that whatever reality is like on that level, it has something that corresponds to our mathematical concepts. There are ‘particles’ which are a little bit like our everyday conception of the word (a small piece of matter) and a little bit not, since no commonplace ‘particle’ is massless. But the math only gives correct predictions if you have some particles, like photons, be massless...and it’s simpler to assume that they actually exist than that we’re getting the whole theory horribly wrong and somehow still getting useful predictions out of it.
OK, now we are getting somewhere. Predictions and wild guesses! QM only makes correct predictions if one invents massless particles like photons. The LHC will never discover a massless particle no matter how many billions of dollars are poured into it. Marge Simpson was right!
The fact that QM says things about reality that you don’t like doesn’t change the fact that QM makes correct predictions. Many commenters in this thread have pointed out that there is a mountain of experimental evidence in favor of QM and against “intuitive” theories of physics. You have essentially ignored that body of evidence and insisted that reality must be simple, intuitive, and easy to explain. At this point, I have to ask: How much evidence would it take to convince you that our universe’s physics are complicated? What observation would you need to see for you to believe that reality isn’t always intuitive and easy to understand?
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Tell me something: Is “Monkeymind” intended to be an avatar account, along the lines of “Clippy”. If so you have absolutely nailed it. You have role played the mind of the human mind (with its monkey-kinship) as it grapples with understanding physics at a level that is beyond its usual scope of practical optimisation and you have done so perfectly. I just can’t tell whether you meant it that way or not.
Yes, and you are not answering any questions I put forth further illustrating monkeyminds at work here. Care to show me where I don’t understand physics. I can argue that you do not. In general because physics should be abut objects that exist and in particular because you can not give me a hypothesis of what object mediates the phenomena of light, let alone a theory which explains your hypothesis. All you seem to be capable of doing is be condescending.
That being the case trying to argue you into not thinking like the monkeymind avatar in question would be equivalent to trying to convince Clippy that paperclips really aren’t all they are cracked up to be—pointless. If you admit (as you do above) that your account is a satirical role-play account rather than you sincerely expressing your ignorance then you shouldn’t expect people to be obliged to buy into your games. Feel free to retract the ‘yes’ at any time if you wish to be taken seriously.
If you role play an avatar that is bad at thinking it is inevitable that it will seem to you like people are treating you as if you are stupid.
Sorry, I did not understand what you meant by Clippy. Never heard of it b4, so I answered hastily. I use Monkeymind everywhere. I used this avatar originally when discussing evolution with theists, and just kept the name.
I am being serious, and so obviously my questions are serious, and they must be good ones because so far, there have been few reasonable answers. One may say that it is because I truly do not understand the topic(s). Feel free to set me straight any time, rather than just telling me I don’t understand.
If you would like to show me where my ignorance lies or that my thinking is flawed, I would appreciate it. I don’t like being wrong, but I don’t mind being corrected. In fact, I desire it so that I do not have to continue holding on to outdated or non-useful explanations.
However, let me state that I do not necessarily think there is a wrong or a right conclusion to the scientific method. Just explanations which are rational or not rational. Explanations that make sense or do not make sense. If this is the flaw in my thinking you are alluding to, then feel free to make a case for that. If it is about the thot experiment of computer generated amplitudes being fired at make believe half-silvered mirrors, then I am all ears.
Theoretical physics is conceptual. Technology (mostly trial & error) is empirical.
Maybe in the process, I will learn something and I can help you realize the limitations of math and the current state of your (apparently collective) understanding and use of the scientific method.
Thankyou. Your outrage didn’t seem to fit with your affirmation so I thought I’d give you a chance to re-answer.
I strongly recommend that you find a physicist and say this to them. They will almost certainly disagree, because making successful predictions is what science is all about. Theories explain, yes, but they do so by offering a mechanism or creating a model for how something works, and the only way to tell if that model is correct is by seeing if it can accurately predict reality. To invent an accurate post hoc explanation if you need the ability to test its validity, and the only way to do that is to see what advance predictions it makes and test those. This is, of course, the reason scientists perform experiments.
Again, I strongly recommend you speak to a physicist about this, because it just isn’t true. In the meantime, take a look at this LW post, which is a clear example of how a mathematical theory of physics, in this case Newtonian physics, can make predictions.
This is my hypothesis. The things it deals with aren’t “objects” in the way the word “objects” is usually used, because the term generally refers to things made up of more than one atom, and QM describes things at a much lower level. However, QM does helpfully provide precise mathematical rules for how these sub-atomic things behave, some of which are outlined in the original post. We know that this explanation is true, at least to a certain degree of approximation, because of its experimental success at predicting some of the things you listed (double slit experiments, etc.). You can talk all you want about how much this doesn’t “make sense,” but the fact remains, the mathematical model outlined in QM is extremely good at predicting reality, which strongly suggests that it really does describe what’s really true.
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Um, and what’s your point?
The point is QM has to invent non-existent massless particles to make their math come out. Nature could care less about mathematical constructs or models.
And BTW, speaking of point, can you define point for me? Everyone here seems to want to tell me what I don’t understand. Perhaps you can educate me.
I’m actually not sure if you want me to define ‘point’ as in ‘zero-dimensional particle’ or point as in ‘what do you mean.’
Nature could care less about whether you can intuitively understand it, too.