Re:Your Brain Is Not An Onion With A Tiny Reptile Inside (2020)
by jfoutz on Monday September 18, 2023 @10:37PM
(#37565030)
I don't know what's happening with my reptile brain that I feel I need to comment on this thread, but whatever.
I've pushed a full wheelbarrow through the mud. Aristotelian model of motion works pretty well. If I ain't push'n, it ain't movi'n
Newton came along with some new ideas. And they're really good for representing lots of motion. put a big friction component in the equation and you can see why moving the wheelbarrow is work.
The problem comes up if you take a hard line against Aristotelian model. Then Newton model of momentum is dead wrong. No other theory has been so studied, and turned out to be so very very wrong.
There are three popular (maybe?) ways people say the same thing.
"all models are wrong, but some models are useful". Is pretty much it, nails it, but feels a little stark to me.
paulg wrote about applied philosophy - http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html kinda Wittgenstein. A half assed description might be, we all kinda don't listen, we don't find common ground, and so we don't communicate effectively.
The third, and my current favorite, is "context matters". Eugenia Cheng and the Join of Abstraction does this the best. In this context, this is how it works. what do you think? Do we disagree because we can't get the same context? 1+1 = 2 is probably right, but adding 1 day to a clock isn't going to help at all, it's still going to be flashing 12:00, because I never set my clocks.
Anyway, if it matters, I think you're right. At least I hope you're right in a very broad context. Not in the vary narrow, this is the latest research accessible only to those who have dedicated years to understanding. But right in the sense that lots of people are trying to do better. it might not work out, but maybe they can make the model a little (or a lot!) better.
I've pushed a full wheelbarrow through the mud. Aristotelian model of motion works pretty well. If I ain't push'n, it ain't movi'n
Newton came along with some new ideas. And they're really good for representing lots of motion. put a big friction component in the equation and you can see why moving the wheelbarrow is work.
The problem comes up if you take a hard line against Aristotelian model. Then Newton model of momentum is dead wrong. No other theory has been so studied, and turned out to be so very very wrong.
There are three popular (maybe?) ways people say the same thing.
"all models are wrong, but some models are useful". Is pretty much it, nails it, but feels a little stark to me.
paulg wrote about applied philosophy - http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html kinda Wittgenstein. A half assed description might be, we all kinda don't listen, we don't find common ground, and so we don't communicate effectively.
The third, and my current favorite, is "context matters". Eugenia Cheng and the Join of Abstraction does this the best. In this context, this is how it works. what do you think? Do we disagree because we can't get the same context? 1+1 = 2 is probably right, but adding 1 day to a clock isn't going to help at all, it's still going to be flashing 12:00, because I never set my clocks.
Anyway, if it matters, I think you're right. At least I hope you're right in a very broad context. Not in the vary narrow, this is the latest research accessible only to those who have dedicated years to understanding. But right in the sense that lots of people are trying to do better. it might not work out, but maybe they can make the model a little (or a lot!) better.