4 ms·

> Today, physicists still lack evidence of other universes, or even good ideas for obtaining evidence. Until this is no longer true, I will view discussions of

> Today, physicists still lack evidence of other universes, or even good ideas for obtaining evidence. Until this is no longer true, I will view discussions of the multiverse as akin to medieval philosophers discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. One of the biggest lessons of the scientific revolution is that logic alone is a poor predictor of reality. We need at some point to go out and test our ideas in the real world.

m4r35n357 7y ago
Upvoted your unpopular but sensible post.
guelo 7y ago
Many times we've needed the pure hypothesizers and even the philosophers before we're able to break out of the previous paradigms.
Koshkin 7y ago
Well, it was pretty much “logic alone” that led us to general relativity, for example.
- coliveira 7y ago
  Incorrect, phenomena that cannot be explained by current theories is already a kind of experiment. Relativity was developed to explain unexplained, observed phenomena. It was not a purely speculative endeavor.
threeseed 7y ago
I don't really understand what the problem is if it's not testable. Many of the greatest scientific discoveries were not testable until decades later. Would you also have viewed Einstein as just a medieval philosopher back in his day ?
- bawolff 7y ago
  > Would you also have viewed Einstein as just a medieval philosopher back in his day ? Einstein's theories were a response to experiments and known facts of the day, that didn't fit the current theoretical models. Sure plenty of it was difficult to test at the time (and still is in some ways when it comes to human scale. How many people do you know that have actually experianced human scale time dialation?) but its not like it was some castle in the sky totally divorced from the observable reality of the day. Additionally even for predictions that weren't practically testable immediately, they were still testable theoretically given enough engineering effort. There is a big difference between not yet knowing how to test something, and not even knowing what you would test if resources/effort were no issue.
hprotagonist 7y ago
> I will view discussions of the multiverse as akin to medieval philosophers discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Interestingly, this is almost certainly anti-catholic protestant agitprop that lost context. As such, the question never seems to have been asked; similar questions of extreme minutae were widely parodied but were probably never a matter of actual debate or discussion by scholastics.
- bawolff 7y ago
  Similarly, how many actual physicists actually seriously argue about interpretations of quantum mechanics? I'm not a physicist but i'm pretty sure its a thing more talked about by philosophers and the popular press than actual physicists. Not that there is anything wrong with philosophizing and inquiring into metaphysical questions.
  - archgoon 7y ago
    Sufficiently few that it is beginning to be said by a small number of physicists that it is a point of embarrassment that the Measurement Problem is about as unresolved as when it first came up a hundred years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/quantum-physics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/quantum-ph...
    - bawolff 7y ago
      The nytimes article you linked has the quote: > But what is the wave function? Is it a complete and comprehensive representation of the world? Or do we need additional physical quantities to fully capture reality, as Albert Einstein and others suspected? Or does the wave function have no direct connection with reality at all, merely characterizing our personal ignorance about what we will eventually measure in our experiments? Isn't this really just asking about scientific realism? Couldnt you say the same thing about any scientific concept? Instead of "what is the wave function", why not "what is an atom". I suspect the main difference is that earlier physical theories had a direct analogy to real life events. We could tell a story about the billard ball model of atoms and we can imagine that in our heads. I have no idea how to imagine a superposition of states. Without the ability to analogize it, i suspect humans intuitively assume its wrong. But lack of imagination hardly seems like a logical reason to reject something. On the other hand, the question of how/when/why (non-metaphysically) a superposition collapses into a single state, seem much more scientific, and that part of the measurement problem seems like a worthy target of scientific investigation. Disclaimer: iana physicist nor really know anything beyond basics about quatum mechanics.
analog31 7y ago
Virtually every physicist is painfully aware of this. The lack of testable theories is not for lack of trying. The search for a theory is precisely the search for a testable theory. But it appears to be a hard problem, and a couple centuries of remarkable progress at solving problems is no predictor that the next problem will be easy.

m4r35n357 7y ago

Upvoted your unpopular but sensible post.

guelo 7y ago

Many times we've needed the pure hypothesizers and even the philosophers before we're able to break out of the previous paradigms.

Koshkin 7y ago

Well, it was pretty much “logic alone” that led us to general relativity, for example.

coliveira 7y ago
Incorrect, phenomena that cannot be explained by current theories is already a kind of experiment. Relativity was developed to explain unexplained, observed phenomena. It was not a purely speculative endeavor.

threeseed 7y ago

I don't really understand what the problem is if it's not testable. Many of the greatest scientific discoveries were not testable until decades later. Would you also have viewed Einstein as just a medieval philosopher back in his day ?

bawolff 7y ago
> Would you also have viewed Einstein as just a medieval philosopher back in his day ? Einstein's theories were a response to experiments and known facts of the day, that didn't fit the current theoretical models. Sure plenty of it was difficult to test at the time (and still is in some ways when it comes to human scale. How many people do you know that have actually experianced human scale time dialation?) but its not like it was some castle in the sky totally divorced from the observable reality of the day. Additionally even for predictions that weren't practically testable immediately, they were still testable theoretically given enough engineering effort. There is a big difference between not yet knowing how to test something, and not even knowing what you would test if resources/effort were no issue.

hprotagonist 7y ago

> I will view discussions of the multiverse as akin to medieval philosophers discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Interestingly, this is almost certainly anti-catholic protestant agitprop that lost context. As such, the question never seems to have been asked; similar questions of extreme minutae were widely parodied but were probably never a matter of actual debate or discussion by scholastics.

bawolff 7y ago
Similarly, how many actual physicists actually seriously argue about interpretations of quantum mechanics? I'm not a physicist but i'm pretty sure its a thing more talked about by philosophers and the popular press than actual physicists. Not that there is anything wrong with philosophizing and inquiring into metaphysical questions.
- archgoon 7y ago
  Sufficiently few that it is beginning to be said by a small number of physicists that it is a point of embarrassment that the Measurement Problem is about as unresolved as when it first came up a hundred years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/quantum-physics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/quantum-ph...
  - bawolff 7y ago
    The nytimes article you linked has the quote: > But what is the wave function? Is it a complete and comprehensive representation of the world? Or do we need additional physical quantities to fully capture reality, as Albert Einstein and others suspected? Or does the wave function have no direct connection with reality at all, merely characterizing our personal ignorance about what we will eventually measure in our experiments? Isn't this really just asking about scientific realism? Couldnt you say the same thing about any scientific concept? Instead of "what is the wave function", why not "what is an atom". I suspect the main difference is that earlier physical theories had a direct analogy to real life events. We could tell a story about the billard ball model of atoms and we can imagine that in our heads. I have no idea how to imagine a superposition of states. Without the ability to analogize it, i suspect humans intuitively assume its wrong. But lack of imagination hardly seems like a logical reason to reject something. On the other hand, the question of how/when/why (non-metaphysically) a superposition collapses into a single state, seem much more scientific, and that part of the measurement problem seems like a worthy target of scientific investigation. Disclaimer: iana physicist nor really know anything beyond basics about quatum mechanics.

analog31 7y ago

Virtually every physicist is painfully aware of this. The lack of testable theories is not for lack of trying. The search for a theory is precisely the search for a testable theory. But it appears to be a hard problem, and a couple centuries of remarkable progress at solving problems is no predictor that the next problem will be easy.