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Let's finish working on our current experiments first, and then declare that we're stuck. We have particle accelerators, gravitational-wave telescopes, solar pr

Let's finish working on our current experiments first, and then declare that we're stuck. We have particle accelerators, gravitational-wave telescopes, solar probes, and planetary probes which we're either still building or still operating, and we haven't finished falsifying-or-verifying all of our predictions. It's certainly wrong to imagine that we need a Great Man in order to come and fix everything. Perhaps we need a Great Insight, but also perhaps the insight has already been published and it simply hasn't been well-adopted yet. After all, people are still today fighting against basic century-old quantum mechanics, hoping that reality is more material and determined than it actually is.

ganzuul 6y ago
It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics. A semester of philosophy should bury them for good. A more modern concern is Boltzmann brains, but those too should offer no barrier to a philosophically aware mind. Perhaps a mere PhD or decade of contemplation would enlighten them to mysteries of the anthropic principle.
- esperent 6y ago
  > It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics Not really, since every valid theory must be testable and falsifiable. The idea that all of reality has been a fleeting random agglomeration of particles that experienced this exact moment, of you reading my sentence here, before dispersing and taking all of suggested reality with it - in other words, a Boltzmann brain - well, it's a cool idea, but where does it get you? It's not falsifiable, ever, so it's not science. It's philosophy, and as such it's not something that a scientist, let alone a whole field of scientists, should be spending their time on. Instead, they should be doing actual science, grounded in realism. If they want to put on a philosopher hat after work and talk about Boltzmann brains, on the other hand, that's great. I, for one, will lap up the crazy philosophies generated by the mind of a physicist, with gusto. But I'd rather they (or so least, most physicists) stick with actual science, aka, their job, most of the time.
- daxfohl 6y ago
  Proclaiming "let's kill locality" doesn't give you anything. I mean sure, kill locality. But replace it with what? You need some precise definition that can make predictions. It's like saying "you have to let go of three-plus-one dimensions" or "you have to let go of space being smooth". Okay...and? You need a new, better, testable constraint to replace it with. Boltzmann brains imply that I should wake up tomorrow with an equal probability of the sun being an orange circle and the sun being a blue unicorn. I've made that bet with myself every night I go to bed for the last twenty years, and it's landed on orange circle every time. Cute concept, but not buying it.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  The anthropic principle is one thing, but Boltzmann brains is so close to solipsism that it's worthless for scientific inquiry. While some philosophy background should be mandatory for physicists, I don't see why they should waste so much of their time on Boltzmann brains ?
  - ganzuul 6y ago
    It is a decent model for ontology, and ontology is good training for observing cause and effect. We grow up to make a lot of erroneous assumptions so we need to train to become good observers. Basically wrestling with the idea lets you observe some of your own biases.
- daxfohl 6y ago
  It's entrenched because relativity specifies a maximum speed. Remove locality and relativity falls apart. Removing it for some cases like correlation but leaving it for causation and communication seems arbitrary. Why? Saying "just because" feels like a hack. What untertheory underlies what is bounded by locality and what isn't? What new predictions does that make and how do you test it? Solve that, and you've got a Nobel Prize waiting for you. Saying "we don't need locality" gets you a noble eye roll. It's not like math has no concepts without locality. Locality is absent from most of mathematics. The question is, what specifically is the math that models reality? The thing that has locality almost everywhere and for almost everything but a couple exceptions? And what other exceptions can we expect? So it's not that physicists don't accept non locality, it's that so far no mathematical theory that explains the relationship between locality and non locality of correlation precisely in a way that matches reality and makes other testable predictions.

ganzuul 6y ago

It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics. A semester of philosophy should bury them for good. A more modern concern is Boltzmann brains, but those too should offer no barrier to a philosophically aware mind. Perhaps a mere PhD or decade of contemplation would enlighten them to mysteries of the anthropic principle.

esperent 6y ago
> It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics Not really, since every valid theory must be testable and falsifiable. The idea that all of reality has been a fleeting random agglomeration of particles that experienced this exact moment, of you reading my sentence here, before dispersing and taking all of suggested reality with it - in other words, a Boltzmann brain - well, it's a cool idea, but where does it get you? It's not falsifiable, ever, so it's not science. It's philosophy, and as such it's not something that a scientist, let alone a whole field of scientists, should be spending their time on. Instead, they should be doing actual science, grounded in realism. If they want to put on a philosopher hat after work and talk about Boltzmann brains, on the other hand, that's great. I, for one, will lap up the crazy philosophies generated by the mind of a physicist, with gusto. But I'd rather they (or so least, most physicists) stick with actual science, aka, their job, most of the time.
daxfohl 6y ago
Proclaiming "let's kill locality" doesn't give you anything. I mean sure, kill locality. But replace it with what? You need some precise definition that can make predictions. It's like saying "you have to let go of three-plus-one dimensions" or "you have to let go of space being smooth". Okay...and? You need a new, better, testable constraint to replace it with. Boltzmann brains imply that I should wake up tomorrow with an equal probability of the sun being an orange circle and the sun being a blue unicorn. I've made that bet with myself every night I go to bed for the last twenty years, and it's landed on orange circle every time. Cute concept, but not buying it.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
The anthropic principle is one thing, but Boltzmann brains is so close to solipsism that it's worthless for scientific inquiry. While some philosophy background should be mandatory for physicists, I don't see why they should waste so much of their time on Boltzmann brains ?
- ganzuul 6y ago
  It is a decent model for ontology, and ontology is good training for observing cause and effect. We grow up to make a lot of erroneous assumptions so we need to train to become good observers. Basically wrestling with the idea lets you observe some of your own biases.
daxfohl 6y ago
It's entrenched because relativity specifies a maximum speed. Remove locality and relativity falls apart. Removing it for some cases like correlation but leaving it for causation and communication seems arbitrary. Why? Saying "just because" feels like a hack. What untertheory underlies what is bounded by locality and what isn't? What new predictions does that make and how do you test it? Solve that, and you've got a Nobel Prize waiting for you. Saying "we don't need locality" gets you a noble eye roll. It's not like math has no concepts without locality. Locality is absent from most of mathematics. The question is, what specifically is the math that models reality? The thing that has locality almost everywhere and for almost everything but a couple exceptions? And what other exceptions can we expect? So it's not that physicists don't accept non locality, it's that so far no mathematical theory that explains the relationship between locality and non locality of correlation precisely in a way that matches reality and makes other testable predictions.