Einstein said one should be able to explain any theory to a barmaid and Feynman said if you can’t explain it to a 6 year old then you don’t understand it.
Both of them were pretty good at explaining things, as scientists went, but this is a serious exaggeration as far as the actual comprehensibility of the theories goes. The six most accessible chapters from the Feynman Lectures on Physics, republished separately as Six Easy Pieces, are still way over the head of an ordinary six year old, and the Theory of Relativity was famously little understood in its time. I recall reading one anecdote by a contemporary where he says that he spent several days with Einstein, and every day Einstein tried to explain the theory to him. He said that by the end of it, he still couldn’t make head or tails of it but was convinced Einstein knew what he was talking about.
Some theories in physics today are genuinely very difficult to understand, and take a lot of focused study to make sense of. I was accounted a pretty promising student in physics, and dropped the subject after a year in college, and a lot of stuff was still way over my head by the time I switched tracks. But the reason they actually believe these theories, and consider them theories rather than simply conjectures, is that they’re very well supported by evidence. They’re unintuitive and hard to understand, but it appears that they’re actually true regardless.
Human beings never faced evolutionary selection pressure towards being able to understand the most fundamental workings of reality. There’s no particular reason they should be easy for us to understand.
It was never “true” that the earth was flat. Obviously the earth was round before people figured out that it was round, but there were no experiments which “confirmed” that the earth was flat. The earth was demonstrated to be round by experiment in the third century BC, and we have no evidence of any experiments predating that which indicated otherwise. The roundness of the earth was not discovered by the “common sense” of ships vanishing over the horizon.
Experiments showed that the earth was round, to within a small margin of error. Further discoveries showed that, within that margin of error, it was not perfectly round. At each step, experiments advanced our knowledge, rather than misleading us. There is actually a specific coined term for the position you’re arguing, using the same argument, and this is it.
Common sense has lost out quite a lot in science. Einstein himself, for instance, criticized quantum mechanical models, arguing that if they were true, we would expect nonsensical things like quantum entanglement, so we should be pretty sure that the models were wrong. Unfortunately, reality came back with a resounding “screw you Einstein, quantum entanglement is totally a thing.”
Math, on the other hand, has a much better track record. We do not have a history of mathematically proving that something should never happen, for instance, and reality comes back and says “tough, I’m doing it anyway.” We have a track record of working out mathematical formulas that work when you apply them to abstract numbers, and then when we use mathematical models to try and make predictions about the real world, they actually work. Do you know how black holes were discovered? First, people did the math, based on our models of physical law, and found that if you plug the numbers in, if you pack enough matter together, black holes are what you get. It wasn’t until years later that we made the observations that showed that black holes really do exist.
This is why scientists use mathematical models of reality, not just “common sense.” It works. If it were easier than common sense explanation, we would have been doing this thousands of years ago, but it’s not. And so the people who have computers, satellites, phones and airplanes, are us, the people living in a civilization founded on the fruits of science, and not the human race preceding the advent of science. It’s hard to argue with consistent, reliable results.
You know, that comic has always bugged me a bit. The quantum electrodynamics bit makes sense, but I see no way all that GPS devices are dependent on relativity to work. To get them to work right, we have to design them to account for the predictions of relativity, rather than just classical mechanics, but if the universe ran on classical mechanics rather than relativity, I can’t see any way in which it would prevent us from creating GPS devices; it seems to me that it would be even easier.
Relativity has loads of experimental support, but unless you count nuclear energy, which was already observed before the advent of the theory of relativity, if not explained, then I’m stuffed for examples on how industry’s benefited from it being true.
Relativity works describing reality, so companies are making a killing using it to build accurate GPS devices. A bit more roundabout than some of the others, but doesn’t seem “wrong”.
But unlike all the others, if Relativity weren’t true, they’d still be able to do that. They’d just do it by not incorporating the predictions of Relativity.
If electricity worked by classical models, we wouldn’t be building semiconductor circuits differently, we wouldn’t be able to build them at all. All the others could be implemented for initiatives that would be possible if they were real, but impossible otherwise, so Relativity is the odd one out.
There are doubtless other models by which electricity could hypothetically work that would allow circuits that do interesting things. I don’t see where the focus on specific “classical models” is drawn from.
Well it’s not so much that the connection was wrong. It just didn’t fit the pattern of “If this were real, people would be making a lot of money from it”. Because relativity doesn’t make GPS easier or cheaper. It’s just that if relativity were false, our GPS systems would be constructed differently.
To get them to work right, we have to design them to account for the predictions of relativity, rather than just classical mechanics, but if the universe ran on classical mechanics rather than relativity, I can’t see any way in which it would prevent us from creating GPS devices; it seems to me that it would be even easier.
Yeah, the comic seems to be missing the mark there.
Still, if we designed them to work taking into account relativity, and the universe ran on classical mechanics, then they would not work.
I almost typed out a long reply to this, but honestly, that would have been pointless. You are making the same mistakes, not simple points of disagreement, but very obvious and demonstrable mistakes, over and over. Please read the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence before replying to any more of my comments, if you want me to respond.
OK, I will. I told you I would, but I have to answer all the responses. I will do that regardless of weather I think it is pointless, because I think it is respecting the forum.
But it would be helpful if you point out my mistakes. What if I read all this stuff and then still make the same “mistakes.” How will I ever know?
I am beginning to think it is a diversion. 2morrow I will read it all and I will be back.
OK, I will. But it would be helpful if you point out my mistakes. What if I read all this stuff and then still make the same “mistakes.” How will I ever know?
I am beginning to think it is a diversion.
If you continue to make the same mistakes after reading the sequence, the members here will continue to point them out, up to the limits of their patience.
Telling you to read the sequence is a diversion, in that while I could explain the same material myself given enough time, I would really rather not deal with responding to several simultaneous posts making the same mistakes over and over for the time it would take to cover all the material, given any alternative, and would much rather have the time to refresh my patience while you cover it on your own.
Good enough. Since I am demonstrating intellectual honesty and openess by reading everything you ask, can we agree to this? If I say I understand it but but that I disagree, will you then try to make the case for this half-silvered mirror experiment, or are we done?
Thank you for your patience. It is really appreciated.
I would ask you to explain the basis of your disagreement. If I felt like we were making any headway in mutual comprehension, I would be willing to make a case for the half-silvered mirror experiment, otherwise not.
The map is not the territory, and of course we can’t expect certainty in our map. That doesn’t mean the territory isn’t there; it just means we update our map as we find new things.
Both of them were pretty good at explaining things, as scientists went, but this is a serious exaggeration as far as the actual comprehensibility of the theories goes. The six most accessible chapters from the Feynman Lectures on Physics, republished separately as Six Easy Pieces, are still way over the head of an ordinary six year old, and the Theory of Relativity was famously little understood in its time. I recall reading one anecdote by a contemporary where he says that he spent several days with Einstein, and every day Einstein tried to explain the theory to him. He said that by the end of it, he still couldn’t make head or tails of it but was convinced Einstein knew what he was talking about.
Some theories in physics today are genuinely very difficult to understand, and take a lot of focused study to make sense of. I was accounted a pretty promising student in physics, and dropped the subject after a year in college, and a lot of stuff was still way over my head by the time I switched tracks. But the reason they actually believe these theories, and consider them theories rather than simply conjectures, is that they’re very well supported by evidence. They’re unintuitive and hard to understand, but it appears that they’re actually true regardless.
Human beings never faced evolutionary selection pressure towards being able to understand the most fundamental workings of reality. There’s no particular reason they should be easy for us to understand.
x
It was never “true” that the earth was flat. Obviously the earth was round before people figured out that it was round, but there were no experiments which “confirmed” that the earth was flat. The earth was demonstrated to be round by experiment in the third century BC, and we have no evidence of any experiments predating that which indicated otherwise. The roundness of the earth was not discovered by the “common sense” of ships vanishing over the horizon.
Experiments showed that the earth was round, to within a small margin of error. Further discoveries showed that, within that margin of error, it was not perfectly round. At each step, experiments advanced our knowledge, rather than misleading us. There is actually a specific coined term for the position you’re arguing, using the same argument, and this is it.
Common sense has lost out quite a lot in science. Einstein himself, for instance, criticized quantum mechanical models, arguing that if they were true, we would expect nonsensical things like quantum entanglement, so we should be pretty sure that the models were wrong. Unfortunately, reality came back with a resounding “screw you Einstein, quantum entanglement is totally a thing.”
Math, on the other hand, has a much better track record. We do not have a history of mathematically proving that something should never happen, for instance, and reality comes back and says “tough, I’m doing it anyway.” We have a track record of working out mathematical formulas that work when you apply them to abstract numbers, and then when we use mathematical models to try and make predictions about the real world, they actually work. Do you know how black holes were discovered? First, people did the math, based on our models of physical law, and found that if you plug the numbers in, if you pack enough matter together, black holes are what you get. It wasn’t until years later that we made the observations that showed that black holes really do exist.
This is why scientists use mathematical models of reality, not just “common sense.” It works. If it were easier than common sense explanation, we would have been doing this thousands of years ago, but it’s not. And so the people who have computers, satellites, phones and airplanes, are us, the people living in a civilization founded on the fruits of science, and not the human race preceding the advent of science. It’s hard to argue with consistent, reliable results.
Well said. Personally, I prefer this argument for science.
You know, that comic has always bugged me a bit. The quantum electrodynamics bit makes sense, but I see no way all that GPS devices are dependent on relativity to work. To get them to work right, we have to design them to account for the predictions of relativity, rather than just classical mechanics, but if the universe ran on classical mechanics rather than relativity, I can’t see any way in which it would prevent us from creating GPS devices; it seems to me that it would be even easier.
Relativity has loads of experimental support, but unless you count nuclear energy, which was already observed before the advent of the theory of relativity, if not explained, then I’m stuffed for examples on how industry’s benefited from it being true.
Relativity works describing reality, so companies are making a killing using it to build accurate GPS devices. A bit more roundabout than some of the others, but doesn’t seem “wrong”.
But unlike all the others, if Relativity weren’t true, they’d still be able to do that. They’d just do it by not incorporating the predictions of Relativity.
If electricity worked by classical models, we wouldn’t be building semiconductor circuits differently, we wouldn’t be able to build them at all. All the others could be implemented for initiatives that would be possible if they were real, but impossible otherwise, so Relativity is the odd one out.
There are doubtless other models by which electricity could hypothetically work that would allow circuits that do interesting things. I don’t see where the focus on specific “classical models” is drawn from.
I did not know that the GPS—relativity connection was wrong. Thanks.
Well it’s not so much that the connection was wrong. It just didn’t fit the pattern of “If this were real, people would be making a lot of money from it”. Because relativity doesn’t make GPS easier or cheaper. It’s just that if relativity were false, our GPS systems would be constructed differently.
Failing to fit the pattern counts as wrong. The comic I cited is making an implicit assertion that that pattern holds, and this assertion is wrong.
Yeah, the comic seems to be missing the mark there.
Still, if we designed them to work taking into account relativity, and the universe ran on classical mechanics, then they would not work.
x
I almost typed out a long reply to this, but honestly, that would have been pointless. You are making the same mistakes, not simple points of disagreement, but very obvious and demonstrable mistakes, over and over. Please read the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence before replying to any more of my comments, if you want me to respond.
OK, I will. I told you I would, but I have to answer all the responses. I will do that regardless of weather I think it is pointless, because I think it is respecting the forum.
But it would be helpful if you point out my mistakes. What if I read all this stuff and then still make the same “mistakes.” How will I ever know?
I am beginning to think it is a diversion. 2morrow I will read it all and I will be back.
If you continue to make the same mistakes after reading the sequence, the members here will continue to point them out, up to the limits of their patience.
Telling you to read the sequence is a diversion, in that while I could explain the same material myself given enough time, I would really rather not deal with responding to several simultaneous posts making the same mistakes over and over for the time it would take to cover all the material, given any alternative, and would much rather have the time to refresh my patience while you cover it on your own.
Good enough. Since I am demonstrating intellectual honesty and openess by reading everything you ask, can we agree to this? If I say I understand it but but that I disagree, will you then try to make the case for this half-silvered mirror experiment, or are we done?
Thank you for your patience. It is really appreciated.
I would ask you to explain the basis of your disagreement. If I felt like we were making any headway in mutual comprehension, I would be willing to make a case for the half-silvered mirror experiment, otherwise not.
The map is not the territory, and of course we can’t expect certainty in our map. That doesn’t mean the territory isn’t there; it just means we update our map as we find new things.