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Physics isn't special in this regard, though. All conscious thought is about models, abstractions and filing things away in boxes. I might think this post of mi

Physics isn't special in this regard, though. All conscious thought is about models, abstractions and filing things away in boxes. I might think this post of mine starts with the letter P, but if I made the http request by hand, starting it by sending the utf8 encoding of P to the network card won't work, because I need headers. On the other hand if my child tried to render the opening P I'd ask her to not draw on my phone screen please.

gammagurke 6y ago
Physics is slightly special in that it tries to optimise for mathematical simplicity rather than ease-of-conscious-thought. If we find a simpler or more predictive model for the electron, physicists will happily abandon the model we currently have, while nothing will destroy our brain's model of 'what I type is what is sent'. Conscious thought isn't even required for the process of physics, we only use it because it is the only thing we have to approximate the mathematical reasoning that physics does require.
- sideshowb 6y ago
  Definitely agree with your first sentence, I was thinking it's special somehow just not in the way we perceive models rather than 'reality'.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
> Physics isn't special in this regard, though. Yep. I immediately started thinking about how this “real”/“not real” dichotomy applies to programming. We write programs that confidently declare not only that they’re defining facts for the purpose of the computation, but transferring them and interoperating with other such stated facts. But they’re all abstractions, they’re all convenient fictions we use to describe, model and hopefully send electricity through minerals to achieve the result we defined. Even stepping a bit away from the physics involved, just considering the humans who do lithography and are closest to reality, their mental model and work is still an approximation of that reality that’s effective at their level of abstraction. And this doesn’t just apply to human-mechanics interaction. It’s something my messed up brain thinks about with human-human interactions all the time. We have mental models of how the electrical impulses travel through our fellow animated bags of meat, but they’re not just approximations they’re often very flawed. But we still interact and we hopefully don’t become overly obsessed with the underlying details we don’t and probably can’t fully grasp.

gammagurke 6y ago

Physics is slightly special in that it tries to optimise for mathematical simplicity rather than ease-of-conscious-thought. If we find a simpler or more predictive model for the electron, physicists will happily abandon the model we currently have, while nothing will destroy our brain's model of 'what I type is what is sent'. Conscious thought isn't even required for the process of physics, we only use it because it is the only thing we have to approximate the mathematical reasoning that physics does require.

sideshowb 6y ago
Definitely agree with your first sentence, I was thinking it's special somehow just not in the way we perceive models rather than 'reality'.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

> Physics isn't special in this regard, though. Yep. I immediately started thinking about how this “real”/“not real” dichotomy applies to programming. We write programs that confidently declare not only that they’re defining facts for the purpose of the computation, but transferring them and interoperating with other such stated facts. But they’re all abstractions, they’re all convenient fictions we use to describe, model and hopefully send electricity through minerals to achieve the result we defined. Even stepping a bit away from the physics involved, just considering the humans who do lithography and are closest to reality, their mental model and work is still an approximation of that reality that’s effective at their level of abstraction. And this doesn’t just apply to human-mechanics interaction. It’s something my messed up brain thinks about with human-human interactions all the time. We have mental models of how the electrical impulses travel through our fellow animated bags of meat, but they’re not just approximations they’re often very flawed. But we still interact and we hopefully don’t become overly obsessed with the underlying details we don’t and probably can’t fully grasp.