4 ms·
I think the way these are phrased do a better job expressing the "vibe", for lack of a better word, of our current understanding. That the particles and constan
by ravi-delia 5y ago
I think the way these are phrased do a better job expressing the "vibe", for lack of a better word, of our current understanding. That the particles and constants are declared by fiat, with behavior constrained by simpler laws, is an understanding I didn't come to until I took a QFT course. The physicist's God is as concerned with forbidding seemingly pointless things as the biologist's God is with beetles.
- mhh__ 5y agoVibe is not a bad word to use in these situations.
- whimsicalism 5y agoIt is interesting that we humans have so much difficulty breaking away from anthropomorphizing.
- roywiggins 5y agoIf large chunks of our brainpower are actually hardwired to think in terms of other humans¹, anthropomorphism might just be a strategy to recruit those hardwired systems into helping out with other tasks. ¹ this may not be true
- ravi-delia 5y agoAnd yet the vibe persists! Presumably it's due to low-level patterns you subconsciously pick up on, but much of the much-discussed physicist-intuition comes from knowing how the universe "likes" do do things. There's a similar thing in math, with many of the greats having just a few tricks they used over and over to great effect in any number of fields. I guess we're used to dealing with people, so the pattern is expressed as a preference (which does double duty encoding that it's not an absolute law).