6 ms·

>"In physics, it is fundamentally impossible to predict the outcome of wave function collapses/pick your favorite interpretation's verb." This is one interpret

by nonbel 8y ago

>"In physics, it is fundamentally impossible to predict the outcome of wave function collapses/pick your favorite interpretation's verb." This is one interpretation of quantum mechanics. Plenty of physics is done without any consideration of this. >"CERN doesn't do statistics on their histograms because they don't have good models..." I believe the histograms you are referring to were done on the data, not on the predictions. And afaik they actually do lack a good model of the higgs boson mass, since they never predicted an exact mass. >"However if your department deals with signals that are hard to distinguish from background then you have some way of expressing that idea in your vernacular, whatever it is." Distinguishing signal from background is the same thing, its rudimentary stuff you do when you can't predict exactly what you are looking for. The key difference is that in advanced science you check for deviations from the model you believe is correct. No one at CERN believed the standard model without a higgs boson they used for the background reflected reality.

whatshisface 8y ago
There are zero valid interpretations of quantum mechanics where you can tell me which particles will come out of an event, even in principle. It seems silly to suggest that describing your certainty in your results is incompatible with "advanced science," when the reason you're doing it is because of a direct law of nature. The Higgs boson might have never been observed - there is a certain chance that it was just lucky photons all along. If you are in a field where you don't need statistics, it is not because they aren't at play, but instead because they all have -9999 in the exponent and you have implicitly decided not to worry about them.
- nonbel 8y ago
  >"There are zero valid interpretations of quantum mechanics where you can tell me which particles will come out of an event, even in principle. It seems silly to suggest that describing your certainty in your results is incompatible with "advanced science," when the reason you're doing it is because of a direct law of nature." There is no fundamental uncertainty in GR predictions. There is none in the stefan-boltzmann law, etc. In many cases whatever QM uncertainty exists will be negligible next to measurement error and so is not considered. Acting like QM uncertainty has anything to do with 99% of physics is nonsense.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >In many cases whatever QM uncertainty exists will be negligible next to measurement error and so is not considered. If you are in a field where you don't need statistics, it is not because they aren't at play, but instead because they all have -9999 in the exponent and you have implicitly decided not to worry about them.
    - nonbel 8y ago
      >"a field where you don't need statistics" I feel some topics are getting confused here. Now you seem to be saying "a field that doesn't need statistics" only doesn't need it because the error due to QM is negligible compared to other sources. How do you account for all the advances before QM and statistics?
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        If you have predictively modeled an error source you can subtract it, and then you're left with error sources that you have not modeled. If this is repeated indefinitely you will end up with transistor noise and quantum effects which cannot be modeled. As a result you will always have some aspects of your experiment that must be dealt with statistically. If a field is getting by without expecting its contributors to do statistics it is either a straggler before we realized this aspect of rigor or it is a case where the effects are so large that a nonrigorous detection of them works well enough. Discoveries made before the introduction of error analysis turned out to either be lucky or wrong - a pattern repeated every time we all realize that something was being overlooked. It's worth pointing out that the astronomers of yore probably knew that their measurements weren't perfect and that averaging them was a good idea, which counts as statistics.
        nonbel 8y ago
        >"If a field is getting by without expecting its contributors to do statistics it is either a straggler before we realized this aspect of rigor or it is a case where the effects are so large that a nonrigorous detection of them works well enough." It makes no sense to be concerned about sources of prediction error that are orders of magnitude smaller than your measurement error. Such concerns would only waste time and money for no benefit. This has nothing to do with "straggling" or expected "effect size".

by nonbel 8y ago

whatshisface 8y ago

There are zero valid interpretations of quantum mechanics where you can tell me which particles will come out of an event, even in principle. It seems silly to suggest that describing your certainty in your results is incompatible with "advanced science," when the reason you're doing it is because of a direct law of nature. The Higgs boson might have never been observed - there is a certain chance that it was just lucky photons all along. If you are in a field where you don't need statistics, it is not because they aren't at play, but instead because they all have -9999 in the exponent and you have implicitly decided not to worry about them.

nonbel 8y ago
>"There are zero valid interpretations of quantum mechanics where you can tell me which particles will come out of an event, even in principle. It seems silly to suggest that describing your certainty in your results is incompatible with "advanced science," when the reason you're doing it is because of a direct law of nature." There is no fundamental uncertainty in GR predictions. There is none in the stefan-boltzmann law, etc. In many cases whatever QM uncertainty exists will be negligible next to measurement error and so is not considered. Acting like QM uncertainty has anything to do with 99% of physics is nonsense.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >In many cases whatever QM uncertainty exists will be negligible next to measurement error and so is not considered. If you are in a field where you don't need statistics, it is not because they aren't at play, but instead because they all have -9999 in the exponent and you have implicitly decided not to worry about them.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    >"a field where you don't need statistics" I feel some topics are getting confused here. Now you seem to be saying "a field that doesn't need statistics" only doesn't need it because the error due to QM is negligible compared to other sources. How do you account for all the advances before QM and statistics?
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      If you have predictively modeled an error source you can subtract it, and then you're left with error sources that you have not modeled. If this is repeated indefinitely you will end up with transistor noise and quantum effects which cannot be modeled. As a result you will always have some aspects of your experiment that must be dealt with statistically. If a field is getting by without expecting its contributors to do statistics it is either a straggler before we realized this aspect of rigor or it is a case where the effects are so large that a nonrigorous detection of them works well enough. Discoveries made before the introduction of error analysis turned out to either be lucky or wrong - a pattern repeated every time we all realize that something was being overlooked. It's worth pointing out that the astronomers of yore probably knew that their measurements weren't perfect and that averaging them was a good idea, which counts as statistics.
      - nonbel 8y ago
        >"If a field is getting by without expecting its contributors to do statistics it is either a straggler before we realized this aspect of rigor or it is a case where the effects are so large that a nonrigorous detection of them works well enough." It makes no sense to be concerned about sources of prediction error that are orders of magnitude smaller than your measurement error. Such concerns would only waste time and money for no benefit. This has nothing to do with "straggling" or expected "effect size".