4 ms·
How can a "thought experiment" demonstrate anything?
by quattrofan 7y ago
How can a "thought experiment" demonstrate anything?
- eternalny1 7y agoWell, from the article on the dual-slit experiment ... > What many don’t realize is that the double slit experiment (with particles), proposed by Feynman in 1963, was for decades only a thought experiment. Finally, in 2013, it was successfully performed with electrons.
- 4ad 7y agoThe author is mistaken: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21363496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21363496
- z92 7y agoThe author implied it was a thought experiment for "particles" like electron, though actually demonstrated from the very beginning for non-particles such as photons. That claim still might not be true.
- lidHanteyk 7y agoAll mathematical proofs are thought experiments, for starters. Similarly, all predictive output of scientific models is technically thought experiments, although we nowadays use computers to achieve superhuman precision and accuracy.
- coldtea 7y agoThe same way a logical argument or a mathematical proof can demonstrate anything. It just can't prove it empirically -- but it can very well demonstrate it. Your question is also a "though experiment" (it's pure thought) and yet you aim it to demonstrate something.
- lordnacho 7y agoCommon example is dropping two balls of different mass connected by a chain off a tower. The point is not that is demonstrates something empirically, which of course it doesn't. But it does say something about which hypotheses make sense within whatever assumptions you're making.