Nice! Your concluding paragraphs bring to mind the various sorts of map-territory confusions we get ourselves trapped in and how this causes other downstream confusions. I think, especially as a student, it’s really easy to fall into a trap of thinking physics is the map because that’s what you learn in class. Even though you know in theory that the map describes the territory of reality, you spend so much time just trying to make sense of the map that it’s easy to get lots in it and forget it was ever supposed to point at anything other than itself.
I think we see a similar phenomenon in other fields, so this is not unique to physics, but physics and your post in particular make the prevalence and ease with which we can find ourselves slipped into map-territory confusion clear.
Nice! Your concluding paragraphs bring to mind the various sorts of map-territory confusions we get ourselves trapped in and how this causes other downstream confusions. I think, especially as a student, it’s really easy to fall into a trap of thinking physics is the map because that’s what you learn in class. Even though you know in theory that the map describes the territory of reality, you spend so much time just trying to make sense of the map that it’s easy to get lots in it and forget it was ever supposed to point at anything other than itself.
I think we see a similar phenomenon in other fields, so this is not unique to physics, but physics and your post in particular make the prevalence and ease with which we can find ourselves slipped into map-territory confusion clear.