8 ms·
Regardless of whether this is a real result, I always had trouble "trusting" the "Standard Model" when I was at university. There are too many knobs to twiddle
by DrBazza 6y ago
Regardless of whether this is a real result, I always had trouble "trusting" the "Standard Model" when I was at university. There are too many knobs to twiddle, and levers to pull in order to get the results. The mathematics is non-trivial. Just reading the article gives you an idea of how difficult it is to make predictions from the model.
Compare it to this comment about General Relativity:
"Widely acknowledged as a theory of extraordinary beauty, general relativity has often been described as the most beautiful of all existing physical theories." (via wikipedia - Landau & Lifshitz 1975, p. 228).
(ignoring the cosmological constant, of course).
Compared to most, or all, other physical theories, the Standard Model feels like there's something much simpler set of equations underneath waiting to be discovered.
- whimsicalism 6y agoIt doesn't seem obvious that the fundamental models of reality would just happen to match up with the mathematical constructs that we humans have come up with.
- idolaspecus 6y agoOn the flip side, it wouldn't be entirely surprising if mathematical constructs that we have thought of are in fact very good models of fundamental reality. We should remember that, after all, nothing exists outside of fundamental reality, and if certain basic patterns can be encoded such that the encoding is both high-fidelity and simple, that won't be shocking. It might be awe-inspiring, but not really surprising.
- pochamago 6y ago>nothing exists outside of fundamental reality A bold assertion.
- CarelessExpert 6y agoThis is a deep philosophical debate: Is mathematics invented or discovered? https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/great-math-mystery/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/great-math-mystery/
- whimsicalism 6y agoI think it's a bit less deep than that. It's more, "is the language we use to describe mathematics invented or discovered", which I would put myself (and most people) firmly in the invented camp.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lumost 6y agoMost of the standar model complexity comes from the variety of particles, forces, and aggregations thereof that need to be contended with. GR likewise becomes a brutal computational mess with these many body problems. What will be interesting in these new experimental results is whether we’re reaching the limits where determining the correctness of our approximations becomes impractical.
- haxiomic 6y agoIf its turtles all the way down, and physics goes on forever like a fractal, you'll find domains where you can approximate with relatively simple mathematics ("beautiful") and domains that require much more mathematical machinery to describe
- willis936 6y agoNature doesn't care how complicated it is. A bias towards beauty is a trap that any serious scientist will not fall for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFKgIOX8IRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFKgIOX8IRE
- whimsicalism 6y agoA bias towards "beauty" or simplicity of some form is inevitable and part of good science. For every theory, you can generate a more complicated theory with more moving parts that generates the exact same predictions. For instance, my theory of gravity is the same as general relativity, except that at 3 PM April 9th, 2021, all gravity will be reversed. You have to appeal to some principle to sort out such theories from good descriptions of how the world works.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago> You have to appeal to some principle to sort out such theories from good descriptions of how the world works. Yes: testable predictions followed by experimental evidence. Beyond that I don't see how what you're talking about is anything other than an appeal to aesthetics.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> Yes: testable predictions followed by experimental evidence. But there are an infinite number of theories matching the current evidence. Some predictions of the theories might not be testable, what do you do then?
- willis936 6y agoSimple: you label them as fiction rather than science. The scientific method has experimental feedback built into the loop.
- Vitorystar 6y ago
- coliveira 6y agoDespite its complexity, the model has been remarkably successful during the last decades.
- spekcular 6y agoOn this point, you might enjoy "A Fortunate Universe (Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos)" by Lewis and Barnes. It discusses this "fine-tuning" problem in a detailed and up-to-date way, and avoids the theological speculation found in some other treatments. (That is, fine-tuning is sometimes presented as evidence for God.)