Re:The discrete-time physics hiding inside our continuous-ti...
by AgentME on Monday April 15, 2019 @04:42PM
(#19668729)
>Of course, space-time and quantum mechanics have driven additional nails in the coffin of a truly understandable world.
I'd think the opposite. The fact the world can work at least as strangely as relativity and quantum mechanics suggest, and we still figured those out as much as we have so far, reassures me in our ability to figure out the world we exist in.
Re:The discrete-time physics hiding inside our continuous-ti...
by simiones on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @06:05AM
(#19672369)
What I meant was: quantum mechanics and relativity have shown that not only is the physical world slightly different from the kind of world our mind can picture (e.g. "mechanistic, but with the universal attraction force"), it is in fact nowhere near our built-in mechanistic model, and we can never hope to build a real intuition about the world.
However, we can still hope to model and predict it more accurately than we would have ever hoped before, so there is that :)
He also points out that, ever since Newton, the dream of mechanistic world was shattered, and with it, any hope that science would help us "make sense of the world" in a truly satisfying sense. Instead, we have become content with modelling the world mathematically and predicting how it will evolve.
Of course, space-time and quantum mechanics have driven additional nails in the coffin of a truly understandable world.