Somewhere between 0 decibans and 50 decibans, depending on the question you are actually trying to ask. If you’re asking “Is there some way to interpret QM equations without invoking the concept of atoms,” I’d give that about 50⁄50, because I don’t actually know QM and I could see that going either way. If your question is instead “How confident are you that you will continue to make observations consistent with atomic theory for the rest of your life,” I’m quite confident that I won’t see anything obviously falsifying the existence of, say, hydrogen.
For the “’H2O is a meaningful description of water” question, the same problem comes up: most of the scenarios in which it’s not are scenarios in which this was a trick question, because this pattern-matches really strongly as a trick question. My estimate of the probability that I missed something rarely drops below 10% when communicating through asynchronous text with another human.
I’m not trying to deal with the complications of quantum mechanics; and I’m not trying to ask a trick question. (I’m just nowhere near as good at expressing myself as I wish I was.) At the end of your first paragraph, you come close to answering my question—all I’m hoping is to get more of a quantification of how confident you are
When answering a question like that, most of my uncertainty is uncertainty about my interpretation of the question rather than my expectations about the world. I expect my cells to continue functioning and my computer to continue working (p> 80 decibans and 70 decibans respectively), if I mix HCl and NaOH I still expect to get saltwater (p > 60 decibans), and if I shoot a beam of ionized Hydrogen atoms through a magnetic field in a vaccuum, I expect that the beam will curve with a specific radius. If I replace the ionized Hydrogen with ionized Lithium and keep all other factors the same, I expect that radius to approximately seven times that of the beam ofHydrogen atoms (with a few atoms curving at a radius of 6 times that of the Hydrogen if they’re some Lithium-6 mixed in) (p > 60 decibans). I expect nuclear fission to continue working, and so expect that some atoms will be divisible into multiple smaller atoms, though that manifests as a belief that nuclear power plants will keep working (p > 60 decibans).
On the other hand, I expect that I understand your question, but not with anywhere near the level of certainty as I have that I will continue to see the physical processes above operating as I’ve observed them to operate in the past. And even with you saying it’s not a trick question, I’m more certain that the predictions made by atomic theory will provide an accurate enough description of reality for my purposes than that this isn’t a trick question. And I’m almost positive this isn’t a trick question.
Somewhere between 0 decibans and 50 decibans, depending on the question you are actually trying to ask. If you’re asking “Is there some way to interpret QM equations without invoking the concept of atoms,” I’d give that about 50⁄50, because I don’t actually know QM and I could see that going either way. If your question is instead “How confident are you that you will continue to make observations consistent with atomic theory for the rest of your life,” I’m quite confident that I won’t see anything obviously falsifying the existence of, say, hydrogen.
For the “’H2O is a meaningful description of water” question, the same problem comes up: most of the scenarios in which it’s not are scenarios in which this was a trick question, because this pattern-matches really strongly as a trick question. My estimate of the probability that I missed something rarely drops below 10% when communicating through asynchronous text with another human.
I’m not trying to deal with the complications of quantum mechanics; and I’m not trying to ask a trick question. (I’m just nowhere near as good at expressing myself as I wish I was.) At the end of your first paragraph, you come close to answering my question—all I’m hoping is to get more of a quantification of how confident you are
When answering a question like that, most of my uncertainty is uncertainty about my interpretation of the question rather than my expectations about the world. I expect my cells to continue functioning and my computer to continue working (p> 80 decibans and 70 decibans respectively), if I mix HCl and NaOH I still expect to get saltwater (p > 60 decibans), and if I shoot a beam of ionized Hydrogen atoms through a magnetic field in a vaccuum, I expect that the beam will curve with a specific radius. If I replace the ionized Hydrogen with ionized Lithium and keep all other factors the same, I expect that radius to approximately seven times that of the beam ofHydrogen atoms (with a few atoms curving at a radius of 6 times that of the Hydrogen if they’re some Lithium-6 mixed in) (p > 60 decibans). I expect nuclear fission to continue working, and so expect that some atoms will be divisible into multiple smaller atoms, though that manifests as a belief that nuclear power plants will keep working (p > 60 decibans).
On the other hand, I expect that I understand your question, but not with anywhere near the level of certainty as I have that I will continue to see the physical processes above operating as I’ve observed them to operate in the past. And even with you saying it’s not a trick question, I’m more certain that the predictions made by atomic theory will provide an accurate enough description of reality for my purposes than that this isn’t a trick question. And I’m almost positive this isn’t a trick question.
That’s about as ideal a response as I could ask for; thank you kindly for taking the time to write it out.