I’m a bit stunned by this question, so maybe it was intended to be rhetorical. But if not, I believe things like GPS relies on relativity. And my life has been so much better ever since I got an iPhone with a GPS receiver. It integrates with google maps and the local public transportation system to actually tell me what time I should leave my house in order to be able to arrive on time at another location at a specific time by crossreferencing the departure and arrival times of all the subwaytrains and busses in the system.
I’m a bit stunned by this question, so maybe it was intended to be rhetorical. But if not, I believe things like GPS relies on relativity. And my life has been so much better ever since I got an iPhone with a GPS receiver.
It was intended to point out that Einstein didn’t seek out relativity in order to produce useful results, and that, with the possible exception of nuclear energy and atomic bombs, it’s quite likely that, had Einstein not come along, most of the “practical” uses of relativity today would’ve prompted engineers to add time dilation fudge factors to their plans, and then inspired some not-Einstein physicists to figure out what the heck was going on.
In other words, there was really no danger of “stopping at something that’s just true enough for a certain purpose, and no more”, in a way that would actually produce a bad result, or deprive us of a good one for more than a limited time.
In other words, Einstein’s truth-seeking was about his personal desire to “know God’s thoughts”, not to improve the lot of humanity by helping us get iPhone GPS receivers. And as I said earlier in this thread, wanting truth because you’re curious is all well and good, but in the end it’s the search for practical models that drives progress. Science having “true” models saves engineers time and mistakes getting started, but they still have to work out practical models anyway… and sometimes need to be able to deal with things that the scientists haven’t even started figuring out yet.
Case in point: hypnotism. Scientists still don’t have a “true” model for it, AFAIK, but hypnotists have plenty of practical models for it.
I’m a bit stunned by this question, so maybe it was intended to be rhetorical. But if not, I believe things like GPS relies on relativity. And my life has been so much better ever since I got an iPhone with a GPS receiver. It integrates with google maps and the local public transportation system to actually tell me what time I should leave my house in order to be able to arrive on time at another location at a specific time by crossreferencing the departure and arrival times of all the subwaytrains and busses in the system.
It was intended to point out that Einstein didn’t seek out relativity in order to produce useful results, and that, with the possible exception of nuclear energy and atomic bombs, it’s quite likely that, had Einstein not come along, most of the “practical” uses of relativity today would’ve prompted engineers to add time dilation fudge factors to their plans, and then inspired some not-Einstein physicists to figure out what the heck was going on.
In other words, there was really no danger of “stopping at something that’s just true enough for a certain purpose, and no more”, in a way that would actually produce a bad result, or deprive us of a good one for more than a limited time.
In other words, Einstein’s truth-seeking was about his personal desire to “know God’s thoughts”, not to improve the lot of humanity by helping us get iPhone GPS receivers. And as I said earlier in this thread, wanting truth because you’re curious is all well and good, but in the end it’s the search for practical models that drives progress. Science having “true” models saves engineers time and mistakes getting started, but they still have to work out practical models anyway… and sometimes need to be able to deal with things that the scientists haven’t even started figuring out yet.
Case in point: hypnotism. Scientists still don’t have a “true” model for it, AFAIK, but hypnotists have plenty of practical models for it.