This comes across as a rather uncharitable take on fundamental physics, though admittedly not uncommon among the LW bright dilettantes. There are plenty of problems in academia, but there is very little resemblance with “theocracy”. The most radical well intentioned and well reasoned critique of the system is from Sabine Hossenfelder, and most charitable is from Sean Carroll. I would ignore the attitudes in popsci places like subreddits,discords and similar forums, they are loud but have no influence on actual scientists. If you are interested in foundations of physics, I would recommend learning foundations of physics, otherwise your statements are not well informed.
Also @shminux, you recommended learning the foundations of physics. I’ve written some books on special and general relativity. However, it’s true that there is always more that can be learned. I had intentionally used the word “theocratic,” to make my point that the “shut up and calculate” faction within quantum mechanics seems more theocratic than scientific—since science usually involves thinking about why things happen. However, “theocratic” was too extreme of a word. I could have just said the “no-questions-about-quantum-phenomena” attitude seemed unscientific rather than “theocratic.”
I did not mean to come across as sarcastic, sorry if that is how my comment is perceived, it was not my intention. You said you wrote books on the topic, feel free to link them, here or in PM, I am quite interested.
Foundations of quantum mechanics are hard: there has been very little progress since 1930s, so “shut up and calculate” is a safe bet. Just to list some developments in the area: Everette’s Many Worlds, Bell’s inequalities, Zurek’s decoherence/einselection and… and… no, I can’t think of anything else. And none of those are any close to solving the mystery of the Born rule. At least einselection describes how only the eigenstates (pointer states) survive. It does not tell you how to get from there to observations. Most reasonable proponents of MWI readily agree that there is no mechanical way to derive the Born rule from the Schrodinger equation, though it has been well established that it is the only rule that makes sense provided we use probabilities to describe possible outcomes.
Again, calling something you dislike by a connotation-loaded name like “theocracy” is unlikely to help you in your quest to… what is your quest, anyway?
As an aside, I suspect that further progress in the area will involve gravity in some way. Most likely emergent classical gravity, not a fundamental gravitational force like you see falling out of the string theory equations, or loop quantum gravity equations. The only “quantum” gravity that is likely to survive is the perturbative calculation, where you quantize small perturbations on a fixed spacetime background and get gravitons, sort of like you get phonons when quantizing small perturbation in a condensed matter system. Of course, this is no more than speculation.
One of my books is “Einstein Explained: Special & General Relativity for the Masses” (physics pun intended). Yes, it’s pop-sci (“for the masses”), but I believe we convey accurate information. I really feel everyone should understand something about the nature of time, gravity and light; of course this requires passing on at least some introductory knowledge of special and general relativity. Here’s a link to the Amazon copy:
We tried to make it unique with Nietzsche-quoting dog illustrations that were supposed to be sort of like New Yorker (TM) cartoons. I don’t think the book shows any expertise, but your advice to me was to go out and “learn foundations of physics,” and I think the book demonstrates that I have at least some familiarity w/ foundations of physics.
Also, I don’t know that I have a “quest.” However, I think my goals are clearer in the post that linked back to this one. It’s at
Thank you for the link! I’ve looked through the Amazon preview, nice illustrations, and the desire to make unintuitive concepts feel intuitive definitely comes through. There are some misleading statements in that part (let’s ignore acceleration!) whereas acceleration is the most essential part for the resolution of the twin “paradox”, but maybe it gets addressed later.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, excellent point about acceleration. In the current version, we actually don’t ever address the twin “paradox,” let alone how acceleration resolves it.
In a draft version of the book, we had addressed the twin paradox, but we got feedback that the book was way too long. There are other topics we had to cut out as well, which makes me a little disappointed in the final product. The original version was over 600 pages, and that was admittedly too long, but I feel like we went way too far in the other direction. Granted, it will be a first introduction to special and general relativity for most readers, but I know the twin paradox is going to keep them up at night, and I really wish we had addressed it.
Anyway, thanks for looking at the book, and for offering the feedback!
This comes across as a rather uncharitable take on fundamental physics, though admittedly not uncommon among the LW bright dilettantes. There are plenty of problems in academia, but there is very little resemblance with “theocracy”. The most radical well intentioned and well reasoned critique of the system is from Sabine Hossenfelder, and most charitable is from Sean Carroll. I would ignore the attitudes in popsci places like subreddits,discords and similar forums, they are loud but have no influence on actual scientists. If you are interested in foundations of physics, I would recommend learning foundations of physics, otherwise your statements are not well informed.
I think the root cause of LW’s attitude towards physics goes all the way back to the early days and Eliezer’s posts about science vs bayesianism.
I edited this comment because it was too sarcastic, and maybe even mean.
I decided my reply was too sarcastic, and maybe even mean. I apologize.
Also @shminux, you recommended learning the foundations of physics. I’ve written some books on special and general relativity. However, it’s true that there is always more that can be learned. I had intentionally used the word “theocratic,” to make my point that the “shut up and calculate” faction within quantum mechanics seems more theocratic than scientific—since science usually involves thinking about why things happen. However, “theocratic” was too extreme of a word. I could have just said the “no-questions-about-quantum-phenomena” attitude seemed unscientific rather than “theocratic.”
I did not mean to come across as sarcastic, sorry if that is how my comment is perceived, it was not my intention. You said you wrote books on the topic, feel free to link them, here or in PM, I am quite interested.
Foundations of quantum mechanics are hard: there has been very little progress since 1930s, so “shut up and calculate” is a safe bet. Just to list some developments in the area: Everette’s Many Worlds, Bell’s inequalities, Zurek’s decoherence/einselection and… and… no, I can’t think of anything else. And none of those are any close to solving the mystery of the Born rule. At least einselection describes how only the eigenstates (pointer states) survive. It does not tell you how to get from there to observations. Most reasonable proponents of MWI readily agree that there is no mechanical way to derive the Born rule from the Schrodinger equation, though it has been well established that it is the only rule that makes sense provided we use probabilities to describe possible outcomes.
Again, calling something you dislike by a connotation-loaded name like “theocracy” is unlikely to help you in your quest to… what is your quest, anyway?
As an aside, I suspect that further progress in the area will involve gravity in some way. Most likely emergent classical gravity, not a fundamental gravitational force like you see falling out of the string theory equations, or loop quantum gravity equations. The only “quantum” gravity that is likely to survive is the perturbative calculation, where you quantize small perturbations on a fixed spacetime background and get gravitons, sort of like you get phonons when quantizing small perturbation in a condensed matter system. Of course, this is no more than speculation.
One of my books is “Einstein Explained: Special & General Relativity for the Masses” (physics pun intended). Yes, it’s pop-sci (“for the masses”), but I believe we convey accurate information. I really feel everyone should understand something about the nature of time, gravity and light; of course this requires passing on at least some introductory knowledge of special and general relativity. Here’s a link to the Amazon copy:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8ZGQ8RB
We tried to make it unique with Nietzsche-quoting dog illustrations that were supposed to be sort of like New Yorker (TM) cartoons. I don’t think the book shows any expertise, but your advice to me was to go out and “learn foundations of physics,” and I think the book demonstrates that I have at least some familiarity w/ foundations of physics.
Also, I don’t know that I have a “quest.” However, I think my goals are clearer in the post that linked back to this one. It’s at
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NaBfa3cYr8mk55PvT/philosophical-physics-discussion-follow-up
I could have just left it at that, but the dangling loose end of this thread was bothering me, which is why I addressed it here.
Thank you for the link! I’ve looked through the Amazon preview, nice illustrations, and the desire to make unintuitive concepts feel intuitive definitely comes through. There are some misleading statements in that part (let’s ignore acceleration!) whereas acceleration is the most essential part for the resolution of the twin “paradox”, but maybe it gets addressed later.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, excellent point about acceleration. In the current version, we actually don’t ever address the twin “paradox,” let alone how acceleration resolves it.
In a draft version of the book, we had addressed the twin paradox, but we got feedback that the book was way too long. There are other topics we had to cut out as well, which makes me a little disappointed in the final product. The original version was over 600 pages, and that was admittedly too long, but I feel like we went way too far in the other direction. Granted, it will be a first introduction to special and general relativity for most readers, but I know the twin paradox is going to keep them up at night, and I really wish we had addressed it.
Anyway, thanks for looking at the book, and for offering the feedback!