Re:Lost Causes of Theoretical Physics (2003)
by whatshisface on Saturday March 03, 2018 @12:00AM
(#16507977)
">That seems needlessly judgmental.
There's a practical takeaway from my statement - that physics explanations should always be taken with lots of salt (even ones written by physicists, who are prone to throwing out the star baby with the mathwater.) Judgmental, maybe, but not needlessly.
>They’re rarely reasonable.
They're reasonable because they have an answer: it's the one you suggested. People would accept your "north of the north pole" response in a universe where there was no false but well-written alternative. The problem is, outside of very limited audiences and forums mixtures of misunderstood philosophy and science are a lot easier to come by than the truth. (This extends to science journalism, and even to the rare bad press release.)
By the way, if you want to tell people that they're asking the wrong question in a way that keeps them happy, try responding with the knowledge that would make them realize their question was misguided. For example, whenever anything involving moving at the speed of light comes up, my go-to responses are:
- Discussing hyperbolic geometry until it's clear that what looked like a question about pi/4 was actually a question about infinity.
- Mention that most of the equations have a singularity there, and then give some more down-to-earth examples of equations that have singularities.
- Say that we've never seen it happen, and as a result the physics we write down doesn't include it. (This is sometimes the best answer, even though it's the least satisfying to give or hear. If science fiction effect X happened, we'd have to account for it, no matter how badly it would break everything.)
>And?
Physics is all about approximations with known error bounds. (That is, X plus or minus Y, and the equivalent of that but with equations instead of numbers.) That's what's going on at the boundary between physics and metaphysics, and it's the ultimate answer to most "unanswerable" questions.
There's a practical takeaway from my statement - that physics explanations should always be taken with lots of salt (even ones written by physicists, who are prone to throwing out the star baby with the mathwater.) Judgmental, maybe, but not needlessly.
>They’re rarely reasonable.
They're reasonable because they have an answer: it's the one you suggested. People would accept your "north of the north pole" response in a universe where there was no false but well-written alternative. The problem is, outside of very limited audiences and forums mixtures of misunderstood philosophy and science are a lot easier to come by than the truth. (This extends to science journalism, and even to the rare bad press release.)
By the way, if you want to tell people that they're asking the wrong question in a way that keeps them happy, try responding with the knowledge that would make them realize their question was misguided. For example, whenever anything involving moving at the speed of light comes up, my go-to responses are:
- Discussing hyperbolic geometry until it's clear that what looked like a question about pi/4 was actually a question about infinity.
- Mention that most of the equations have a singularity there, and then give some more down-to-earth examples of equations that have singularities.
- Say that we've never seen it happen, and as a result the physics we write down doesn't include it. (This is sometimes the best answer, even though it's the least satisfying to give or hear. If science fiction effect X happened, we'd have to account for it, no matter how badly it would break everything.)
>And?
Physics is all about approximations with known error bounds. (That is, X plus or minus Y, and the equivalent of that but with equations instead of numbers.) That's what's going on at the boundary between physics and metaphysics, and it's the ultimate answer to most "unanswerable" questions.