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Useful for amateur physicists/mathematicians: "A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics" https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/cr

Useful for amateur physicists/mathematicians: "A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics" https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

goldenkey 5y ago
John Baez is actually quite level headed, one of my idols, and I see nothing wrong with that list. However OP wasn't even asserting anything of a discovery or a revolution. He actually ended his post by asking a question: "Then, I suppose, the question further resolves to: which assumption makes our equations easier to work with?" Any decent man would have explained to OP about how the best fitting generalizations/abstractions in mathematics and physics also fit the most specific cases. Instead we had a gatekeeper put OP down like a wild fox in a hen house. It's shit like that, that makes humanity stink of arrogance and petulance. It's people like that, that discourage positivity while dispersing platitudes. Their subscription to authority has no basis in merit, it is exactly like John Baez says: "Crackpot Index #9) List your credentials"
- thewakalix 5y ago
  This is what epistemic status tries to make explicit. There’s a difference between serious conjecture and playful speculation. The former, I think, involves claiming an amount of status for oneself. People view the latter as the former and attack speculators for having insufficient status. It’s a shame, because speculation can be a useful learning activity/opportunity.
- cybernautique 5y ago
  > the best fitting generalizations/abstractions in mathematics and physics also fit the most specific cases Out of curiosity, how does this differ from the criteria of choosing the assumption which makes the equations easier to work with? I feel as if they are the same, though perhaps lacking a careful qualification on my part: "which assumption makes our equations easier to work with (without introducing incorrect solutions)?" Given the choice of abstractions, assuming each abstraction is apt as the next and none of them is "more wrong" than any other, wouldn't the choice of abstraction come down to ease? (or aesthetics, possibly) I'd love your take, and doubly so if I seem to be coming at this backwards.
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Yes, if there is no difference, then we'd likely use the one that is easier or more aesthetic. The heuristic would differ depending on the discipline and the culture of the science. For instance, Matrix mechanics is equivalent to the Shrodinger wave formulation, but it did not catch on for reasons listed here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_mechanics Another system that did not catch on, is Nonstandard analysis, which uses infinitesimals. It is equivalent to the standard curriculum analysis that uses limits. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonstandard_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonstandard_analysis It's hard to pinpoint exactly why these systems weren't chosen. It's not just aesthetics or ease of use. It's a bit of arcane history too. Nonstandard analysis took a while to make rigorous. And by that time, standard analysis had already enveloped the "cult of science." Once standards are set, they rarely change if the current methods are "good enough." I've always sought intuition with everything, so I know about these alternative methods. I find it sad that so many in academia resign themselves to symbol pushing without a real understanding, and then repeat the same misgivings on their pupils. If methods do exist to achieve better intuition, then we should promote them. Often, alternative yet equivalent formulations do provide that intuition. HN is a bit of a cult of personality itself but ironically, about every month on the dot, a submission gets front paged - geometric / vector algebra or quaternions, and how they simplify and clarify the intuition behind 3D transformations. Yet the same HN has curmudgeon gatekeepers that also pop up like clockwork in any science thread, just to make sure all lines of thought correlate to the rote symbol pushing they learned. They didn't gain intuition, so they must feel that it's either impossible to, or that no one else has the right to intuition either. Anyhow... I hope I answered your inquiry.
    - kordlessagain 5y ago
      Grumbling about Tragedy of the Commons doesn’t give use warp drive?
      - goldenkey 5y ago
        Are you mocking me?

goldenkey 5y ago

John Baez is actually quite level headed, one of my idols, and I see nothing wrong with that list. However OP wasn't even asserting anything of a discovery or a revolution. He actually ended his post by asking a question: "Then, I suppose, the question further resolves to: which assumption makes our equations easier to work with?" Any decent man would have explained to OP about how the best fitting generalizations/abstractions in mathematics and physics also fit the most specific cases. Instead we had a gatekeeper put OP down like a wild fox in a hen house. It's shit like that, that makes humanity stink of arrogance and petulance. It's people like that, that discourage positivity while dispersing platitudes. Their subscription to authority has no basis in merit, it is exactly like John Baez says: "Crackpot Index #9) List your credentials"

thewakalix 5y ago
This is what epistemic status tries to make explicit. There’s a difference between serious conjecture and playful speculation. The former, I think, involves claiming an amount of status for oneself. People view the latter as the former and attack speculators for having insufficient status. It’s a shame, because speculation can be a useful learning activity/opportunity.
cybernautique 5y ago
> the best fitting generalizations/abstractions in mathematics and physics also fit the most specific cases Out of curiosity, how does this differ from the criteria of choosing the assumption which makes the equations easier to work with? I feel as if they are the same, though perhaps lacking a careful qualification on my part: "which assumption makes our equations easier to work with (without introducing incorrect solutions)?" Given the choice of abstractions, assuming each abstraction is apt as the next and none of them is "more wrong" than any other, wouldn't the choice of abstraction come down to ease? (or aesthetics, possibly) I'd love your take, and doubly so if I seem to be coming at this backwards.
- goldenkey 5y ago
  Yes, if there is no difference, then we'd likely use the one that is easier or more aesthetic. The heuristic would differ depending on the discipline and the culture of the science. For instance, Matrix mechanics is equivalent to the Shrodinger wave formulation, but it did not catch on for reasons listed here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_mechanics Another system that did not catch on, is Nonstandard analysis, which uses infinitesimals. It is equivalent to the standard curriculum analysis that uses limits. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonstandard_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonstandard_analysis It's hard to pinpoint exactly why these systems weren't chosen. It's not just aesthetics or ease of use. It's a bit of arcane history too. Nonstandard analysis took a while to make rigorous. And by that time, standard analysis had already enveloped the "cult of science." Once standards are set, they rarely change if the current methods are "good enough." I've always sought intuition with everything, so I know about these alternative methods. I find it sad that so many in academia resign themselves to symbol pushing without a real understanding, and then repeat the same misgivings on their pupils. If methods do exist to achieve better intuition, then we should promote them. Often, alternative yet equivalent formulations do provide that intuition. HN is a bit of a cult of personality itself but ironically, about every month on the dot, a submission gets front paged - geometric / vector algebra or quaternions, and how they simplify and clarify the intuition behind 3D transformations. Yet the same HN has curmudgeon gatekeepers that also pop up like clockwork in any science thread, just to make sure all lines of thought correlate to the rote symbol pushing they learned. They didn't gain intuition, so they must feel that it's either impossible to, or that no one else has the right to intuition either. Anyhow... I hope I answered your inquiry.
  - kordlessagain 5y ago
    Grumbling about Tragedy of the Commons doesn’t give use warp drive?
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      Are you mocking me?