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This article is framed in a way I find epistemologically suspect. It confuses observations, models and truth. Some of its intertitles are meaningless like "Will

This article is framed in a way I find epistemologically suspect. It confuses observations, models and truth. Some of its intertitles are meaningless like "Will we ever know the real nature of space and time?". The article is actually about models in which spacetime is an emergent property of more fundamental structures: string theory and loop quantum gravity. Both face a lack of experimental evidences validating their predictions.

Koshkin 4y ago
But the question, then, is: is there reality behind the model (or, rather, how close to reality the model is)? The answer lies in how accurate the model is. This is all we can know in this regard.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  But knowing if there is reality behind the model is not a scientific question. There is no tool in science which can answer that. The only thing that matters is how well the model predicts what we observe. One can believe that’s a form of truth but people should be conscious that it is merely a belief.
  - hnews_account_1 4y ago
    This is not strictly true. The recent Nobel was such an expedition which was ignored by scientists in the 40s-70s as an esoteric philosophical question that cannot be answered. It is still not “answered” per se but Bell’s formulations leave very few choices for the base reality of the model. Observe that the model itself worked quite well regardless of the base reality. Knowing that truth doesn’t change any current applications. But who knows where it’ll lead. So knowing which model is successful and which model is real is a very important question that we must try our best to answer. Only in the natural sciences can such a question even be answered.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  No matter how good a model is, a simulacrum is still a simulacrum.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Of course not all these models are is a description of the mammalian brains tooling to make prediction. There is not a single reason to believe it’s the real nature of “reality,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
pyinstallwoes 4y ago
> It confuses observations, models and truth. Succinctly describes the global zeitgeist. Perhaps modern idioms are to blame with relation to the copula. We seem to say things are what they are without a qualifier on what type of existence it has.
JakeAl 4y ago
Scientific American was once like reading well illustrated research journal paper. Today it's the "science" equivalent of People magazine.
saeranv 4y ago
I don't think this criticism is fair. For example, the article in the section quoted below clarifies that string theory hasn't been proven experimentally, and is being investigated mathematically, here: > But string theory is difficult to understand—it lives in mathematical territory that has taken physicists and mathematicians decades to explore. Much of the theory’s structure is still uncharted, expeditions still planned and maps left to be made. Within this new realm, the main technique for navigation is through mathematical dualities—correspondences between one kind of system and another.

Koshkin 4y ago

But the question, then, is: is there reality behind the model (or, rather, how close to reality the model is)? The answer lies in how accurate the model is. This is all we can know in this regard.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
But knowing if there is reality behind the model is not a scientific question. There is no tool in science which can answer that. The only thing that matters is how well the model predicts what we observe. One can believe that’s a form of truth but people should be conscious that it is merely a belief.
- hnews_account_1 4y ago
  This is not strictly true. The recent Nobel was such an expedition which was ignored by scientists in the 40s-70s as an esoteric philosophical question that cannot be answered. It is still not “answered” per se but Bell’s formulations leave very few choices for the base reality of the model. Observe that the model itself worked quite well regardless of the base reality. Knowing that truth doesn’t change any current applications. But who knows where it’ll lead. So knowing which model is successful and which model is real is a very important question that we must try our best to answer. Only in the natural sciences can such a question even be answered.
pyinstallwoes 4y ago
No matter how good a model is, a simulacrum is still a simulacrum.
edgyquant 4y ago
Of course not all these models are is a description of the mammalian brains tooling to make prediction. There is not a single reason to believe it’s the real nature of “reality,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

pyinstallwoes 4y ago

> It confuses observations, models and truth. Succinctly describes the global zeitgeist. Perhaps modern idioms are to blame with relation to the copula. We seem to say things are what they are without a qualifier on what type of existence it has.

JakeAl 4y ago

Scientific American was once like reading well illustrated research journal paper. Today it's the "science" equivalent of People magazine.

saeranv 4y ago

I don't think this criticism is fair. For example, the article in the section quoted below clarifies that string theory hasn't been proven experimentally, and is being investigated mathematically, here: > But string theory is difficult to understand—it lives in mathematical territory that has taken physicists and mathematicians decades to explore. Much of the theory’s structure is still uncharted, expeditions still planned and maps left to be made. Within this new realm, the main technique for navigation is through mathematical dualities—correspondences between one kind of system and another.